


Chekhov's Gun

by Skepticamoeba



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Aww Garak Has Emotional Repression, Existential Crises, Fake Dating, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Introspection, M/M, OCs - Freeform, THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTINGGG, changelings boo we hate your goo, couples therapy resorts, friend breakup but it gets better, grief of a sort, intrigue! except the author has no idea how to weave a mystery storyline together, lots of banter, on god we gone eat some fruit, post episode: S05e16 aka Our Man Bashir, series-typical violence, slowburn, so much yearning, switching POV, the Caribbean but in space lol, there was one bed (gasp), undercover spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24472885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skepticamoeba/pseuds/Skepticamoeba
Summary: Julian feels giddy, a bit, and unwound. He reaches for the small plate of limes and plucks one from it, sucks the pulp from the skin before licking the rind of salt off from the glass rim of his drink. “You keep—keep watching me.”Even now, Garak watches him with a strange, frightening insistence. Overly pointed. “Just making sure you don’t ‘blow our cover,’ as you say.”“Wont,” Julian mutters before he takes a generous drink. He grimaces at the sour pull, the heat burn going down and settling. “I’m very skilled at keeping a secret when I want to, Elim.”[Julian and Garak go undercover at a Couple's Retreat on a tropical planet! Will they keep dancing around one another or finally be able to try their shot at honesty?]
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 57
Kudos: 188





	Chekhov's Gun

**Author's Note:**

> The location of the retreat is loosely based on somewhere I actually stayed at during one of my many trips to Trinidad. It’s just off of a beach well-known for being a hatching ground for leatherback turtles. Sadly, I did not see any massive adults while I was there, but I did see many babies. Also my mother and I always joke because I am constantly mixing the terms Bajan (from Barbados) and Bajoran. #justcaribbeanthings
> 
> I owe some of this fic to the movie Gattaca (one of my favorite films ever). Its poignant treatment of the relationship between the two brothers is something I hoped to echo, even a little, with the relationship between Jules and Julian. Chapter quotes are from poems by Alda Merini.

**Chekhov’s Gun |** “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”

I.

_“I won’t prepare you by revealing myself to you / in a bound-about closeness”_

“Can I trust you, gentlemen?” Sisko says, fingers splayed over the documents scattered on the desk. His gaze is steady, assessing. While he can be a very warm man, a playful man, there are times Julian can see the iron beneath the surface. It is enough to make Julian feel confident. It is enough to settle the giddy young man inside him that craves the thrill of conspiracy theories and James Bond spy tales.

He glances at Garak, sitting back in the chair next to him, eyes half-lidded and as placidly disinterested as ever. There is nothing _steady_ about Garak—nothing _fixed_ and certain. Garak’s gaze or intentions look through, look past and beyond at things that Julian can only hope to graze in passing.

“You can count on me,” Julian says.

Garak purses his lips in a brief flash of resignation and exhales heavily through his nose.

“Very well,” Garak says, “but I expect to be fairly rewarded.”

*****

Julian hasn’t gotten chosen for many discreet operations before for the simple reason that everyone on the station has been under the impression that discretion is a talent he is incapable of. He supposes, everyone so very aware of his genetically-altered status, they look at him differently now. Julian doesn’t act much differently, but he’s less cautious to hide the things that make him stand out. It wasn’t all an act before, just a simple diversion of attention. A sleight of hand. He wanted to be special, and recognized as such, but never too special, never too outstanding. If he was annoying, it was to create distance. He could laugh it off, play the fool, know that he was alone but incapable of inviting anyone in. As much of it was self-preservation as it was the fear of creating an accomplice.

Admittedly, he’s been avoiding Garak since the news got out. Being called a computer isn’t anything particularly creative, or unexpected. But there’s this underlying implication that he’s incapable of feeling, that everything is tied to strategy and cunning wit. Perhaps if he were Cardassian, he would understand better. Though altered through medical innovation, he is still human and he still has dreams, regrets, fears, longings.

Sometimes he even wonders if somehow he has grown to feel more than he is supposed to. He doesn’t recall having felt so torn and complex as a child. What he has been robbed of is the certainty that this change is due to the peeling away of childhood and not due to an operation he had no control over. Certainly, he must feel more than most. He notices more than most. More than he has ever been able to let on before. He wishes he could say this and Garak would believe him, but how does a liar say that they are not lying and expect to be believed? Boy who cried wolf; wolf that cried boy. Ontological problem.

He’s hoping, in an underhanded way, that this joint operation will allow him an opportunity to clear the air between them—a clean slate, you might say. He doesn’t need much time. Just enough to break through the distance.

*****

On the commercial shuttle to Angama IV, Garak and Julian sit next to each other, connected in one warm continuous line from shoulder to knee. It is quiet but for the thrum of the engines and the muted conversation around them. Julian can’t stop fidgeting with the security belt strapped across his chest. He feels he should say something, anything. He lets out a small, self-deprecating laugh instead. More a puff of air than a noise, really. Garak doesn’t turn to regard him, not so explicitly, but there is still a shift. Julian feels Garak’s gaze on him, and he doesn’t back down. He looks at Garak and smiles, apologetic and self-aware.

“The irony of it, what we’re doing—I suppose I find it amusing,” he confesses, though no explanation has been asked for. Garak’s gaze tears away from him sharply.

“A bit,” Garak says. Even in transport, he doesn’t let his guard down. He sits, back straight and hands on his knees in a position that projects casual comfort but is the product of the exact opposite.

“Shouldn’t we strategize?” Julian asks. “I know you also read the report, but our stories should match up, shouldn’t they?”

Garak looks at him again for a long moment and then stares down at his own lap. “Lies work best when they’re close to the truth.”

The words seem like they’ve been chosen with a great deal of care, and that Garak is pained to say them. Everything about Garak is under a precise veil that has been shuttered down since the moment that Julian’s true nature was revealed.

“Yes, exactly,” Julian murmurs, quiet, leaning further against Garak, trying to catch his eye again. When this fails, Julian sighs and retreats. “My name is Subatoi Yves, 32 years old. I was granted my medical license from the Andorian Academy of Medicinal Health and have gone on to present papers at some of the most prestigious inter-galactic conferences.”

“Elim Prentak, 45, gardener and landscaper for some of the wealthiest families on Chin’toka II,” Garak replies drily. Julian frowns, irritation and something else welling up inside him.

“I’m making an effort, despite it all, and I’ll be damned if I don’t _like_ you, Garak,” he huffs out in exasperation, throwing his hands up. “For all your stubbornness, volatile moods and subterfuge, I do like you! It wasn’t me playing house. It wasn’t like this.”

If anything, Garak seems to fold into himself even tighter, hands curling into fists on his thighs. He stares straight ahead with unblinking reptilian eyes. 

“Why did you agree to come on this mission with me if you detest me so much?” Julian asks, pulling away entirely and closing his eyes as he tips his head against the backrest. “You have no obligations. You’re not a Starfleet officer. You could have just as easily refused.”

As silly as it is, that fact had given Julian hope. He should know better by now to think Garak operates based on little other than his own best interest. He should know better than to be conceited enough to consider himself amongst those few other things.

The confession comes quiet after several minutes of silence. It comes just when the sickening dip in his stomach, as if turbulence has rocked the cabin, is starting to settle into a permanent hopelessness.

“I don’t detest you,” Garak says so close and so soft that it’s barely audible over the ambient noise. “I misjudged you. My moods are volatile, as you said. Allow me this, a while longer.”

The words aren’t an apology, or acceptance, or an explanation. Nonetheless, they make Julian ache with a weight heavy on his diaphragm. Julian is always waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the right words, the right opportunities. He’s tired of waiting.

“Are you alright?” Julian asks, despite it all. In spite of it, the mess they’ve made of themselves. They are confined, after all. A shuttle isn’t a crawlspace, not so much proximity that there’s little space to breathe, and it’s commercial so it’s bigger than Starfleet’s own, but Julian is a doctor through and through. He reaches over and rests his hand over Garak’s.

“We met at a similar retreat for bachelors,” Garak says in lieu of answering, “and I approached you at the replimat when I saw you reading. I thought you looked like the kind of person that would be eager to make a friend.”

“We’ve been dating,” Julian stumbles over the words, wets his lips. “for four years and a half.”

The most convincing lies are the ones closest to the truth.

*****

The sky on Angama IV is clear, mid-afternoon arrival delivering them right as it’s a muted periwinkle fading into hazy white. It’s not so much a color, but a sense of light cast on everything. The docking rig is on an elevated wooden platform, overlooking the landscape. It affords him a view of the blue mountains in the distance, shrouded with clouds the higher they go. Tropicalia branches out into the sky, green upon green bobbing with the breeze.

When Julian turns, hand made a visor to block out the blinding light, he sees a white-sand beach strand and surf curling against it again and again. When it pulls back, rears inward on the inhale before the crash forward again, the wet sand is a dark pink. There are children walking the strand, bare-chested and faces hidden by their straw hats, brims arching wide and drawing shadows as their laughter drifts up high on the wind.

It’s hot—humid in a way that reminds him of home. Already his clothes are starting to stifle. He glances over at Garak and is brought up short by the flush spreading across his scales. Julian always forgets the way Garak’s scales come alive under the sunlight. Artificial fluorescent lighting doesn’t do it justice—cannot possibly imitate the way natural lighting brings out the cool blue tones, closer to black, and the warm grey gleam when it shifts just so.

When Garak grabs his hand, tangling their fingers together, Julian startles. “You’re staring, doctor.” Garak’s looking at him sidelong when Julian meets his eyes.

“Nothing unusual about that,” Julian says, mouth dry and trying to smile. “Considering where we are. What we’re doing.” He knows he’s failed when Garak lets out a laugh.

“Really.” Garak shakes his head in amusement. “We’ll be here for a _while_. Being on the same page is not enough. Best get used to it.”

Of course. Talking about their plan and enacting it are two very different things. Julian knows that. Couples are physically intimate. Stating these things as fact does nothing for the way he feels his breathing quicken. Their palms sweat, pressed close as they are, and Julian is conscious of it all throughout their approach to the group of people making casual light-hearted conversation on the ground. _Stupid_ , he thinks. He’s held hands with more people than he can count, Garak included, though perhaps that is more suitably considered a clasp of hands than anything else.

The closer he gets, the larger his dawning realization becomes. He’d read the intelligence report, but it still gives him pause when he’s standing face-to-face with some of the most well-known and influential people across the galaxy. It’s a strange mix of diplomats, politicians, and celebrities from all areas and specialties. Though he doesn’t doubt his own skills at blending in, Julian does feel a little in awe. He knows he’s staring, but it’s hard not to.

“Doctor,” Garak says so close Julian can feel the heat ebbing off of him, “it wouldn’t do to give the wrong impression.”

Julian flushes and turns his gaze away from an actress, looking at Garak with a frown. “I wasn’t-“

“You were,” Garak says. “Let’s not pretend you weren’t thinking of it.”

Julian scrunches his face up at Garak, which receives and answering smirk. Garak lightly touches the small of Julian’s back to guide him away from the couple in question and toward the majority of the group that has gathered to meet the welcoming committee. 

Veneya and Esii, the two retreat leaders, are smaller than Julian expected. They wear matching broad grins on their round, homely faces. Veneya wears a light summer dress, cut to leave as much skin to the eye as possible, and Esii is in nothing but a pair of tropical swim trunks. Their tanned bodies speak of leisure and days spent satisfying whims.

“Welcome to Angama IV!” Veneya says, her teeth flashing happily. “We’re happy to have you here at our 75th Tropicalia Couples’ Retreat.”

“I’m sure you’re excited to get settled,” Esii says, “and see the variety of activities we’ve prepared for you to deepen your relationships, and also to make friends along the way! The cabins are a small ways away, so we will be taking the trolleys as we introduce you to what we hope you’ll be able to achieve at this retreat based on your own individual circumstances.”

Julian’s never really been the kind to survive much conflict in a relationship. Usually, a fight or discussion is the cue that the relationship is on its way out. It’s a bit embarrassing, he thinks, as the group follows the leaders into the open-air trolleys and they move through foliage. It’s, perhaps, fitting that he’s here with Garak. At the moment, it’s the relationship giving him the most trouble, and the one he wants to keep more than he’s ever wanted to keep any other. But they’re not here for leisure, or to reconnect.

When he reaches over and grabs Garak’s hand, chin in his hand as he looks at the passing landscape and allows the droning voice over from the guides to wash over him, he feels him jump. He squeezes and, surprisingly, after a moment, Garak squeezes back. It’s brief, and Garak brushes Julian’s hand away soon after, but Julian finds himself hiding his smile in his palm. It settles the nerves a bit—soothes him to know he’s not alone.

“I feel like James Bond,” Julian mutters. “It’s less sexy than I thought it would be.”

“Your fashion sense is sorely lacking.” Garak glances at his sandals derisively before looking away again. “And your subtlety is nonexistent.”

“I’m good at subtle,” Julian protests. “I’m generous too. Just ask any of the Dabo girls.”

“Careful, doctor, wouldn’t want me to get jealous.”

The wind. It’s the wind that tears at him as he laughs, head thrown back and looking at Garak’s subtle grin.

*****

Their lodgings end up being a series of wooden beach houses, salt-bitten and rustic. The staggered group of them are elevated on stilts with ground floors let out as stables and barn-spaces. A small walk away there is a moss-covered shrine, cobblestone pathway lined with candles melted down to varying degrees. On the torn fence haphazardly barricading the path there is a myriad of colored ribbons, locks, waterlogged tissues, trinkets and baubles left as wishes, quiet desires, supplications and laments. Just off the beach, there is an estuary where the saltwater and the sweet meet, hues changing and gliding against each other like two skies kissing. Fishermen pull into the shallow, pink-wet shores, come back from their early morning missions. They laugh, bronze skin dappled with sweat and sea spray, overjoyed at their catch. The air is so fresh it burns the lungs, makes Garak’s eyes tear up.

Their room is not overly spacious, but it seems larger with the glass door letting out to the small veranda. It’s like the world looks into the small warm room: all the skies in their infinite water-wash, the clouds whisping up high, the tree line and the shore further on. Some diligent cleaning staff has spilled flower petals in a staggering trail across the herringbone parquet floors. Past the daybed, the small breakfast ensemble, the rattan dresser, and over the large bed the petals seem to mock. The bed is not elevated, just a mattress on a woven area mat placed on the ground. The canopy is little more than white mosquito net draping down from the ceiling in generous folds of cloth. It smells vaguely of creaky wood and loose linen, laundry starch.

Julian seems taken as he crouches down and plucks a petal from the ground, a half-smile on his face and his eyes heavy-lidded in that quietly pleased way of his. He rubs it between his fingers and stands, unties the balcony curtains from their bows, and throws open the glass doors. He lets out a laugh, high and almost lost in the sudden fierce wind that sweeps through the room, sending the petals akimbo into the air, bumping into furniture, dizzy and soft against Garak’s face. Julian spreads out his arms and inhales deep, chest expanding like he wants to consume the world. His small frame seems bigger, somehow, thrown stark against the piercing golden light of the fading day. He turns to Garak, eyes closed against the breeze and lips snagging on a grin too wide—too guileless for Garak. To be aimed at Garak. Garak can do nothing less than stare.

“Come, Garak, you can see forever!” Julian says, voice raised and hand outstretched. Garak doesn’t move for long enough that Julian starts looking self-conscious, worried, even. That won’t do.

Garak joins him, stepping out onto the warm balcony. It’s true. If Garak wanted to believe, they could very well be looking at forever. Julian slings his arm across Garak’s shoulders and he, too, is warm, close and sweet. He leans in, lips so close that each word is physical.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Julian asks and Garak closes his eyes.

“Yes,” Garak murmurs. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re not even looking,” Julian says, close as ever, affectionately chastising. Garak opens his eyes. Does not dare to let his gaze waver and acknowledge the movement beside him: the movement away.

“I’m looking.”

****

“Do you want to order wine?” Julian asks later on, sitting on one of the low stools at the round breakfast table neatly tucked into a corner as he fingers a room service menu. Garak is seated at the end of their bed, leaning back on his hands, lazily watching Julian. More precisely, his eyes try not to, but they linger on the stretch of Julian’s calves, the awkward jut of his ankles crossed.

“Anything this place is likely to cater is bound to be watered down and disappointing,” Garak says dismissively. Julian huffs in laughter and shakes his head.

“You and your Cardassian sensibilities. You might be surprised.” Julian turns and holds the menu open for Garak to see. He points at an awfully blue-looking drink.

“An encounter with that is not one you’re likely to survive, doctor.” Garak raises an unimpressed brow. Julian’s eyes narrow in a pout.

“I’m getting it,” Julian says decisively. “It says here that it’s the newest _thing_ for Orions.”

“We do have a welcoming dinner in a few hours, you’re aware?” Garak sinks further down, on his elbows now, tired of watching Julian’s face—far too expressive.

“A gentleman always gets moderately and politely uninhibited before a dinner.” Julian’s tone is so falsely righteous that Garak has no chance of stifling the laugh it causes. “It’s a rule.”

“I will not carry you back from dinner,” Garak murmurs. Their bedroom gives way directly toward the sun and that is something Garak has not had the pleasure of in a long time. He is content to close his eyes and bask.

“You will,” Julian says, soft and sure and somehow sounding far more distant than the handful of steps to him merits.

“Won’t.”

****

Garak surges awake the moment Julian puts the slightest bit of pressure on the bed. He’s met with Julian’s sheepish smile.

“We have about half an hour until dinner,” Julian says, drawing back with his arms raised placatingly. Garak wants to tell him that he’s not likely to _do_ anything to Julian, but that’s not a promise he can make with any exacting honesty.

“Yes,” he settles for instead. “Alright, you-“ Julian’s hair isn’t as slicked down as usual, curling fringe falling in his face. The air tastes dark and rich, a bit heady. He’s showered already, then, Garak concludes as he falls back again and closes his eyes against the pressure in his throat.

“You’ve gotten ready before me,” Garak says and doesn’t mean it to come out so spoiled. “Suppose I should get up and all. Dressed.”

“Wouldn’t want me to outshine you.” Julian squeezes Garak’s thigh in passing as he makes his way to the vanity and Garak is quick to leave the room.

He rubs at the spot, the confident grip of it still lingering and smarting. After so many hours dozing in the sunlight, Garak fancies himself a bit sun drunk, a bit slow and lightheaded for it, maybe. That must be why he fumbles with his toiletries and is slightly uncoordinated in the shower.

On his way out, he pulls one of the soft white bathrobes down from its hook and wraps himself in it. Now, much more alert, he can see the appalling creamy patterned cotton open collar shirt tucked into a pair of purple draping pants. The distaste must be plain on his face, even through the mirror, because Julian snorts.

“Garak, don’t tell me you don’t _like_ my clothes.” Julian looks singularly pleased with himself, eyes crinkling at the corners as he turns, arm braced on the back of the chair.

“Of course not,” Garak snaps. “It’s embarrassing that you wear these things when I, your good friend, am an excellent tailor.”

He turns away, searching through their luggage for suitable clothes for himself. He’s glad for the excuse to turn away. Julian’s lashes are heavy and dark from the spoolie wax, and his waterlines have been blackened. It’s not a sight Garak’s used to—reserved only for when Julian wants to preen. Is there such a need to replicate, to exactitude, the rituals Julian normally undertakes when he’s seeking a conquest? Julian must know Garak’s noticed the times on the station when he’d do himself up for the person that had caught his eye that week. Must know that it carries implications.

Though, Garak thinks as he peels a set of robes away from the rest, there is a part to be played. Julian always went overboard with his holosuite simulations as well. He’s simply getting in character, and Garak is getting swept along. Momentarily. It hasn’t been so long that Garak is unable to match that sort of enthusiasm.

To say Julian’s reaction is satisfying when he catches sight of Garak in his robes is an understatement. He hasn’t gone overboard—far more comfortable with a dignified yet casual look for himself. In contrast to Julian’s combination of colors, Garak’s gone for a demure monotone ivory set of layered robes. The collar is wide, dipping and suggestive by Cardassian standards. At the hems, intricate golden brocade curls and fidgets playfully: vining flowers creep and tangle with small red fruit. Similar to Julian, his pants are loose and draping allowing for movement and easy breeze to pass through. His dark hair is stark against the fabric, loosely feathering down his shoulders and he’s been generous with the blue face paint dabbed into the teardrop on his forehead, over errant scales, and lightly down the ridges of his neck. He smiles at the way Julian has frozen at the vanity mirror, cheeks darkening and not even pretending to do anything other than gape.

“If we make a good pair,” Garak says, “remember that it is all my doing.”

Julian narrows his eyes, glancing down at his own pants and he shrugs. “You are too scared of color. After our first meeting I’ve never seen you wear anything quite as daring.”

“I am _practical_ about color. Some things should not be abused, my dear.” Garak rounds the mattress and stands behind Julian as he finishes up. The tension of the shuttle is not gone. The discomfort is lying low, bitten back behind questions. Garak has so much he wants to ask, but showing overt interest in any one thing is never the right move. He places his hands on Julian’s shoulders and says nothing of the way Julian jolts, shooting him a curious glance. “We’re going to be late.”

“If we are, that is your doing,” Julian parrots back. “Who fell asleep and didn’t wake up?”

Garak vaguely registers that Julian has far too many small jars and bottles of this or that cosmetic right as Julian plucks one from the bunch. He uncaps it, rolling the ball-end over his wrists, dabbing his neck and behind his ear before he sets it down and half-turns toward Garak. Dark, damp and curling the smell blooms. Julian shoots him a winning grin. “I think we make a very fetching and convincing couple.”

Garak’s mouth tightens and he glances at their reflections in the mirror. “Come, you peacock. If we don’t leave now, I fear you will simply stare at yourself all night.”

Julian squawks indignantly, protesting hotly on his heels the whole time they walk to the venue of the opening dinner.

****

They are directed to a round table with their names on a set of cards in front of their chairs. The pavilion they are in has a high ceiling and is in the prime location to catch the last dregs of color in the sky. There is low conversation buzzing in the air, guests mingling and making small talk. Their own table is not full yet, but Julian immediately turns to the woman seated to his right and begins speaking to her spiritedly. The seat to Garak’s left is still empty, so he contents himself with sipping at the flute of champagne set in front of him. He takes the opportunity to survey the guests.

While Julian may think he can flush the culprit out through flattery and petty conversation, Garak is under no illusions that the task they’ve been given will be simple. It’s a point of pride as is. Julian, someone Garak thought that, at the time, he knew so well had managed to be indistinguishably replaced for weeks and Garak had not noticed. Even more than that, Julian himself is not wholly who Garak first thought him to be. When they’d met, a cursory glance at Julian had given the impression of some cute but ultimately naïve and plain man, the kind that come to the “frontier” to reinvent themselves. More fool he. If it had been someone so close, so presumably known and risky, the prospect of finding a pretender in a crowd of unknowns is near improbable. They would have to act seriously out of the ordinary. Benefit of the doubt.

His speculation is interrupted when the chair next to him is pulled back with a loud scraping sound and an unusually tall Andorian woman takes her seat. She is, like many of the others around them, a sight to behold: high brow arches, silver hair drawn back into plaits, delicate antennae carefully turning this was and that, lacquered nails tapping an impatient rhythm on the table cloth. Her features are troubled, mouth downturned and eyes casting around the room—searching. Garak realizes she’s the actress Julian was staring at at the landing.

“Excuse me, but,” she says, “have you seen a Vulcan woman put her things at the table?”

Garak can’t help the way his brows climb in surprise. It’s not as if Andorians and Vulcans are known to get along particularly well, considering their fraught history. He shakes his head, intrigued. “Your partner, I take it?”

She nods her head, biting her lip. She seems frustrated, chin quivering, and for a moment Garak fears she may burst into tears. He peeks at her name card briefly for confirmation before he angles himself more her way. “I’m sure she’s nearby and will be here before the event begins in earnest. It’d be rude to be late.”

The last comment makes the woman laugh. “Oh, you have not met very many Vulcans if you think them above rudeness.”

The weighted sentence makes Garak grimace. “Apologies. I didn’t mean to poke a sore spot.”

“Isn’t that what we’re all here for: to poke a sore spot?” She raises her brows with the expression of someone resigned, chagrined, before she ducks her head and fidgets with her ring. “It’s a bit awkward—like we’re all in group therapy together.”

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” Garak assures. “If you’re here, it means you want to make an effort. I would be worried for those that don’t even bother.”

The Andorian sits back, quiet and contemplative for a few moments. She gives Garak an assessing gaze and then smiles.

“That’s true.” She holds out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is-“

“Tanar, yes, I know,” Garak says, shaking her hand and dipping his head. “I am Elim, and this is my partner Subatoi.”

At hearing his name, Julian turns to him, face open in silent question. His eyes flicker over to Tanar and he smiles at her politely, shifting so that he is also angled toward her. He is closer than he needs to be, half leaning against Garak’s back casually. After a moment his eyes widen.

“ _Oh!”_ he exclaims. “I am a-a _massive_ fan! Elim, couldn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Sorry, my dear,” Garak says, on autopilot and hoping that his skills, years in disuse, do not betray the way he feels Julian’s heat through his clothes. “I thought you were busy speaking to someone else.”

“Well…I was… but still…” Julian actually pouts and Garak is quick to turn his laugh into a cough.

Tanar doesn’t inhibit herself and actually does laugh. “It’s good to know my work is more than local.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Your work could never be local. Well, I may be a bit biased. I went to the Andorian Academy of Medicine and all my peers and I would stay up late to watch the latest episode of _Love on the Sunrise_. Elim already introduced us but, hello, I’m Subatoi.” He leans further against Garak as he reaches over to shake her hand.

Her face seems to brighten as she leans in. “I haven’t been back in ages since the press tour started. We were torn between going back to Andoria and coming here for a change of pace. Maybe we made the wrong choice after all.”

Garak shakes his head. “Don’t be so pessimistic. You clearly chose what you thought would help the both of you the most.”

Julian’s snort is quiet, close, and clearly only for Garak’s ears. Yes, the pessimist telling someone else not to be pessimistic. He shoots Julian a glare with little heat in it.

Tanar glances between them, looking unconvinced. “You two seem to be getting along just fine,” she says at length.

Garak and Julian look at each other for a moment and then away.

“We have our fair share of problems, believe me,” Julian admits quietly. It’s reserved in comparison with how he’s been so far, as if truly upset. Garak reaches back and squeezes Julian’s thigh in approval. _Good job_.

Just as she starts to say something else, the fairy lights clustered at the top of the pavilion dim and everyone quiets. Veneya and Esii stand in the middle and announce the schedule for the next day before introducing the activity leaders. Before they take their seats again, they introduce the staff as well and with that, the food comes rolling out. It’s at that moment that Garak hears a sound and turns in time to catch sight of a Vulcan woman primly taking her seat next to Tanar. There seem to be some whispered words exchanged heatedly, but one would be hard-pressed to note any change at all in the newly-arrived woman’s expression. It’s aloof, under a mask of placid indifference. His attention doesn’t linger on the women, though, when Julian slips his arm through Garak’s and leans his head against Garak’s shoulder.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired,” Garak murmurs down at him. Sandalwood, a smell like sandstorm season on Cardassia Prime, full of quiet bedlam, makes Garak want to press his face to Julian’s hair.

“I didn’t take a nap the moment we got to our rooms,” Julian shoots back, looking up at Garak challengingly. “Besides, there are always all these speeches at these things when all anyone ever wants to do is hurry up and eat.”

Julian has a point and, furthermore, Garak notices the last time he’d had a meal had been in the morning. At lunchtime they’d still been in the shuttle and then they didn’t bother to order food to their rooms. He actually is pretty famished. It has also been a while, Garak realizes, since he’s eaten with Julian. Back on the station, they’d made sure to eat lunch together pretty frequently, but that, for some time, had been with the other one, the impostor. Once Julian was rescued, their missions on the Defiant didn’t allow much time left over for languid conversation. Trivial? Perhaps, but it’s definitely lent to the sensation of bitter alienation he’s felt from Julian. So much had been happening that he simply felt like there was a distinct loss of something essential. There is guilt, yes, especially over some of the things he’d confessed to the changeling in Julian’s place. But more than that there is a gaping doubt about something that, against his better judgment, he’s begun to hold dear.

When the lights draw up again, Julian pulls away. Garak, far too aware of the distance and the missing heat, busies himself with placing his napkin in his lap as the waiters and waitresses roll out the food.

****

Conversation is kept to polite small-talk, not overly intrusive or familiar, just bordering on the superficial. Julian steadily works his way through several glasses of something or other, hands reaching with nervous insistence for something to fiddle with when he’s thinking in the lulls of conversation. He uses any and every opportunity to stand and speak to more people. At the buffet table, he puts his hand on a man’s forearm to steady himself, looks at him in the slant way that makes people pause, and excuses himself before asking what some of the dishes are. By the end of the night, he has business cards from all corners of the pavilion, invitations to brunch or lazy day swimming.

Garak’s eyes follow him around the pavilion, Julian can feel their weight, but Garak never brings him back. Just as well, Julian can see him socializing too. Garak has this _way_ about him, the impression that he’s untouchable but can see right through you. It makes people, whether they want to or not, be more forthcoming to his exacting, sliver-sharp questions.

“You’re popular,” Julian says as he sits next to Garak again, feet beginning to protest how much he’s been gliding about. He leans back, swirling the contents of the glass he holds loosely by the stem, almost daring it to slip.

“Mm. So are you,” Garak acknowledges, gaze flitting from Julian to something, or someone, just past his shoulder. “Not a moment of stillness, you. Flittering about from one person to the next.”

“Jealous, again? This is becoming a trend.” Julian feels giddy, a bit, and unwound. He reaches for the small plate of limes and plucks one from it, sucks the pulp from the skin before licking the rind of salt off from the glass rim of his drink. “You keep—keep _watching_ me.”

Even now, Garak watches him with a strange, frightening insistence. Overly pointed. “Just making sure you don’t ‘blow our cover,’ as you say.”

“Won't,” Julian mutters before he takes a generous drink. He grimaces at the sour pull, the heat burn going down and settling. “I’m very skilled at keeping a secret when I want to, Elim.”

“Making sure you don’t do something _inane_ and get hurt, then.” Garak’s eyes are unreadable, gaze shifting jerkily, clumsily across Julian’s face. “After all, we are not here because of an idle threat.” 

Julian hums noncommittally. Couples are starting to peel away from the banquet, and Julian is starting to feel his head pound. “Walk with me? Need to clear my head.”

Garak hesitates a moment as Julian comes to an unsteady stand, and turns to Tanar and her partner to excuse them for the night. Tanar takes one glance at Julian before she waves them off with a smile. Garak’s hand is heavy on Julian’s waist, guiding them away from the light and the low chatter.

“Better?” Garak asks once they’re a suitable distance away, fresh sea breeze diminishing the cloying feeling that had been clinging to Julian’s throat. Julian leans against Garak, against his vaguely bitter and clean smell.

“Have you ever truly been lovelorn, needing of something like this?” Julian asks, staring out at the black swill as the surf, roughened with night, curls and crashes. “Someone burn you?”

“I wouldn’t invite an outsider into my problems.” It’s an easy deflection. Julian eyes him, unamused.

“I’ve never,” Julian offers, gaze following the stone steps up to the temple, the candles throwing long shadows as they burn through the night. They pass, leave the vague chiming of bells from wind on the charms. “Never let it get serious enough for something like this.”

“Neither have I,” Garak admits after a strained silence.

“Been busy I see,” Julian says, grinning as best as he can as he struggles up the stairs to their lodge. “What’s your _body count_?”

“Don’t be crude.” Garak takes the keys Julian’s been unsuccessfully fumbling with from his hands and opens the door to their room, pushing Julian through it. “Surely your number of past partners will always outmatch mine.”

“Dunno. You’re awfully quiet about your youth.” Julian slips out of his sandals at the door and pads to the balcony—they left the door open while they were gone. Surely the room is swarming with mosquitoes now. Surprisingly, Garak doesn’t let the conversation drop. After a moment, he even joins Julian out on the balcony, pressed shoulder to shoulder. He’s taken off some of his layers too, left in a light undershirt.

“Not much to tell.” Garak’s voice is quiet, distracted as he looks past them, into the night. Everything is shades of black, but for Garak backlit from the low lighting in the room. His feathery hair is being fitfully tossed in the wind. “Not many cheerful things, anyhow. I’m a much more entertaining adult.”

“Can’t figure you out,” Julian says, muffled by the way he presses the side of his face to his crossed arms over the veranda. He peers up at Garak, sulking. “Feels like I take one step forward and you take three back.”

“Don’t whine, it’s unbecoming,” Garak says, reaching over to ruffle Julian’s hair, pressure on his head a bit more than necessary. A slight push before Garak’s stalking inside again.

“Boring.” Julian’s scalp tingles and he reaches up to touch the upper crest of his own ear. He sighs, looking up at the sky. No pollution here to block a pristine sight of stars.

****

Garak pretends to sleep when Julian comes in the room again, and is sure Julian knows he’s pretending. Child caught out. Oh well. He can hear Julian move around the room, curse when he bumps into something. The lights dim and then there is rustling, the mosquito net being pulled up over a dark head, dark body following. Garak peers, eyes made the barest slits, watches as Julian climbs into bed, pushing his smell into Garak’s space. Sweat and salt and alcohol and sandalwood, lime, acid. The bed is large, plenty of room for two adults to sprawl and bump into each other minimally.

Julian collapses face first with a muffled grunt. Turns his head, gaze burning on Garak.

“Night, Garak.” His voice is a gravelly scrawl, too close to sleep to be anything but an afterthought. He’s quick to drop off, the reedy sound of his breathing cocooned by the net. It’s such flimsy material, and yet it traps noise like nothing else. Or maybe Garak’s paying too much attention.

He shifts, turning to face Julian, see his face slack in sleep. Thinks of the way he’d pulled the lime into his mouth until his lips had been red, and swiped the salt from the glass. Swiftly stifles that thought before it can linger.

****

The walking daylight wakes Garak, and through the hazy gauze of netting he spots Julian at the breakfast table under the window. When he’s rubbed the sleep from his eyes, pulling aside the netting to stick out his head, he sees the table is covered with jelly glasses, lids off and strewn. There’s a white plate, sullied with crumbs and fruit pulp settled in front of Julian, but Julian hasn’t even moved to acknowledge Garak. He’s licking the jelly from his fingers and the knife in his hand absently, looking out the window. In nothing but a pair of snug black swim trunks, he looks like something from a dream, if Garak bothered to humor those. _And isn’t he stunning_ , Garak thinks to himself. The kind of stunning that turns heads on the promenade. It’s not the first time Garak’s thought so.

“What are you doing up so early? You indulged so much last night I thought you’d be asleep until late afternoon.” Garak sits up fully, slipping to the edge of the bed. The door to the balcony is open again, pale morning light filtering in through the curtains. The surf is audible, persistent like a metronome.

“Toast?” Julian turns to him then and watches as Garak drops down into the other stool. “Come off it, I haven’t taken leave in a long time. Besides, my resistance is higher than you think.”

“No, thank you.” Garak picks through the contents of the complimentary platter: boiled eggs, saltfish, lychee, and melon. There’s a pitcher full of some brown, dusky juice that proves tart when Garak tries it. The corners of Julian’s eyes wrinkle in amusement. His hair is disheveled, curling in the salty air.

“I’ve got plans, if you must know,” Julian says, leaning in conspiratorially, stealing the egg Garak had between two fingers and grinning proudly before biting into it.

“Plans?” Garak asks incredulously. They’ve only just arrived. Aside from their meeting with the counselor in the afternoon, they shouldn’t have _plans_ just yet. His bewilderment must be plain because Julian laughs good-naturedly and reaches over to pat Garak’s hand reassuringly. It doesn’t help much. “I don’t like the sound of plans.”

“One, my plans are faultless, thank you very much,” Julian says, waving his jellied toast around, flinging crumbs carelessly. Garak raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Two, I am going to use this as a vacation, and enjoy myself. And _three_ , think of it as an opportunity to scope. To do some information gathering.”

Garak sits back, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “You’re not convincing in the least.”

“I _am_ ,” Julian says, sing-songing in a way that irritates Garak. He’s so damnably _buoyant_. “Come with. We’re just going to the beach for a swim, just for a bit.”

“Don’t like the sea,” Garak mutters, gaze sliding away from Julian’s smug expression. They both know how this will end, but, well, let Julian squirm a little. Let him work for it. “Who invited you, anyway?”

Julian waves his hand noncommittally. “A couple I spoke to last night. Very athletic-looking. Apparently it’s their third time here. Can you imagine? Coming here _three_ times? I wonder what their problem is.”

“They probably don’t have one and just have the money to spare,” Garak says.

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go, please. Or, rather, come with me?” Julian bats his eyelashes and Garak doesn’t move. He twitches when Julian bumps their fingers together, dimpling smile turned mischievous. “C’mooonnn.”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full.” Garak withdraws his hand, restless, into his lap. Julian grins at him full of tooth and triumphant bite. Damn him.

Julian gets up, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and steps out onto the balcony, hidden by the curtains.

“A doctor shouldn’t smoke, you know,” Garak says, raising his voice slightly to be heard.

“Oh, hush, you,” comes the laughing reply. “Hurry up and get ready.”

****

The couple, it turns out, are not only athletic-looking, but fans of many extreme sports. The four of them are not the only ones out on the beach. The lifeguard, bored and young, sits listlessly in the tower, and there are children running up and down the strand. Some other guests are staggered across the beach lying down and sunning themselves on towels, or spread out on lounge chairs. Merle and Xavy don’t seem to be looking to do any lounging any time soon.

“So, what’s your pick?” Merle says, cocking his hip against the side of one of the jet skis he apparently rented for the entirety of their stay. Xavy has three surfboards propped up on either side of her. Plenty of options.

Garak is hanging back, uncharacteristically unsociable as he assesses the couple from under his large-brimmed hat. Fine by Julian if he seems reticent. They’re supposed to be a couple on rocky grounds anyhow. Still, he shoots Garak a little glare and waves him over with a curt gesture. Garak shakes his head mutely, choosing to struggle with setting up a beach umbrella on his own instead. Julian rolls his eyes.

“Sorry about him, he’s a little shy.” Julian can feel the burning stare on the back of his head. He smiles as he puts a hand on one of the surfboards.. “I’ll be timid today too and stick to what I know.”

He leaves them briefly, running up the beach to join Garak. His mood is high. He can’t remember the last time he spent considerable leisure time outdoors, as relative as the term leisure may be. “Give me that.”

“No.” Garak glares at Julian, holding fast to the neck of the umbrella and huffing when a strong breeze nearly blows it from his grasp.

“Elim, just _give it_ ,” Julian says, exasperated. He shoos a relenting, resentful Garak out of the way and proceeds to close the umbrella first. He gives Garak a pointed look as he snaps it shut, barely capable of stifling his laughter. Garak looks far too harried for it to have just been a few minutes of him trying to plant an umbrella.

Julian crouches down, begins to dig in the hot sand. It stings in a welcome way as he shifts it. After a moment, Garak’s clawed hands join his and they work in silence. Julian knows Garak is pouting, even if he’d never call it that.

“You make space, first. Dig until it’s wet and dark,” Julian says softly, teasing gone from his tone. “You want it deep enough it won’t blow away. Strong foundations, same as with anything.”

Julian stands and places the root of the umbrella down in the hole they’ve dug, helping Garak fill it by sliding the displaced mounds with his foot. They tamp it down together, securing the umbrella, and _then_ Julian opens the umbrella again.

“There.” Julian arranges the large woolen blanket Garak’s brought and pats it. He whips off the shirt light cotton shirt he’d put on for politeness’ sake before leaving the room. “Don’t be too lonely while I’m gone.”

Garak looks at the sea, an uncertain look crossing his face. “Who’d be lonely?”

Julian stands, crosses the distance between them and Garak turns to him, a question in his eyes. A question that never gets vocalized because Julian swoops down and gives him a swift, dazzling kiss, off-center and lingering for only a moment. In the wake, when Julian pulls back, Garak pushes into the space Julian leaves behind.

“Be good,” Julian chokes out, body flushed and electric as he jogs down the beach.

****

Garak’s heart lurches sharply left at the kiss that’s so brief it’s nothing but a casual goodbye, but Julian’s gone too quick to say anything. He’s left staring at Julian’s retreating back, the way his gangly body pushes into life with grace. Light seems to fill him, as if he fully inhabits himself. Julian laughs brightly when he rejoins the couple and soon the three of them are cutting through the surf. They take to their boards, slipping through the lips of waves until they are past the breakwater and can sit calmly, biding their time for a wave they want.

Garak is not a fan of deep, temperamental water. Doesn’t like the way the sneaky undertow can drag one into the depths before they’ve realized they’re being pulled in. Doesn’t like how the seafoam spits. He especially doesn’t like the way Julian, not a seeming care in the world, tames waves as easily as he steals the food from Garak’s plate. He hangs back from the taller waves, is not _ambitious_ enough to make Garak overly anxious. Slips from top to the inner tube as if riding velvet, and comes out the other side gleaming and face split in laughter.

When he runs up the beach, closer to lunch than midmorning, Garak is in the middle of conversation with Tanar and T’prinveth, her partner. He’d spotted Julian approaching, expression open with a lightness Garak hadn’t seen in a while, but the expression gets more complicated when he catches sight of Garak’s company. Close, Garak can see his dark tousled curls matted with salt, body still dripping from the sea. Closer, Julian, still wet and not caring a single bit for Garak’s clothes, presses against Garak’s side, half-hanging to his back. His breaths are juddering, thrilled.

“You took your time,” Garak says, unimpressed.

“’M tired,” Julian mumbles, pressing his burning forehead to the back of Garak’s neck. His hair drips, cool against Garak’s scales and past the collar of his shirt. He’s so warm from being in the sun, at odds with the cold water.

“The waves look challenging,” T’prinveth says, her glance at the sea akin to that one might give a particularly distasteful dish.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to go in yet, how was it?” Tanar’s gaze is far more wistful, and then she turns to smile at Julian.

Garak feels Julian lift his head, and then Julian’s chin digs into Garak’s shoulder. “It’s pretty calm in the shallows and past the breakwater. Anywhere in between is the devil’s game.”

“You’re very skilled.” Tanar gestures at the board. “I’ve never seen one of those.”

“I guess you wouldn’t have.” Julian laughs, pausing to assess her closer than he had before. “Andorian weather wouldn’t allow for it. Would you like to learn?”

Tanar is good at turning Julian down gently, says she’d rather not fluster her partner—who seems unflusterable—and soon the two women excuse themselves to meet with the counselors. 

Julian allows a few seconds of silence to pass once they’ve left and flops back, spread on the blanket. “Chummy, aren’t you?”

“Jealous?” Garak shoots back with a shake of the head.

“A little,” Julian says and isn’t that unbalancing for a misleading moment? Garak jerks, staring down at Julian for a few seconds before he laughs.

“The sun must be getting to your head.” Garak tosses Julian a canteen full of water. Up close, exposed, Julian is lean. Great legs, shapely, entangled so that one of Julian’s heels knocks against Garak’s knee. Racquetball—one of the universe’s seven wonders, surely.

“Must be,” Julian says, throwing an arm over his face after he drinks generously from the canteen, water dripping down his chin.

“You _are_ very skilled,” Garak admits mildly. “Didn’t know you did all that.”

“Was most voted player on the Starfleet medical water polo team,” Julian says, the bobbing of his adam’s apple plain as he swallows. He grins down at Garak, eyes shadowed by his arm. “Swim every night in the holosuites.”

Now, that is surprising. “Every night? I thought you did racquetball with O’Brien?”

“Oh, I do,” Julian says, shifting so he’s curled on his side, arm pillowing his head. “And then when he gets tired, I swim.”

“ _Why_?” It sounds like far too much work for Garak. And it seems so purposeless.

“Oh, dunno.” Julian’s voice is soft, considering. As if he’s never thought about it. “To get somewhere, I suppose.”

“Have you ever gotten there?” Garak asks, curious now.

“Not yet. ‘S a work in progress.” Julian sits up and it puts him close enough that he can pat Garak’s thigh. Again with the touch on the thigh. “When’s our counselor thingy.”

“In an hour,” Garak says thickly. “We could have lunch.”

“Lets.” And there’s that brilliant, dazzling smile that makes Garak’s mouth feel like tundra.

****

Shortly after lunch—seafood and fried fish, fried bananas, fried vegetables, fried, fried, fried—and still a good amount of minutes before their appointment to “assess their relationship,” Julian lies on the bed, looking up through the skylight. His hands are resting on his stomach, pleasantly full and sated, energy dwindling from expending so much of it early on and still unused to the strangely tiring sensation of taking in too much sun.

“Hey, Garak,” he mumbles. Vague hum from somewhere on his right, too lazy to check. Daybed, then. Good enough. “Why don’t we get along?”

The silence stretches for a bit and then Julian hears shifting. “…I think we’re getting along.”

Garak’s voice is drowsy, but not overly sure. Cautious. Julian should scan him, just in case. On the station he’d always been haranguing Garak about not getting enough sun.

“I mean why don’t Subatoi and Prentak get along,” Julian corrects, turning on his side to look at Garak. The sheets are cool on his skin. He can’t seem to calm down—something restless under the epidermis, something asking him to move and run and exhaust himself. He feels his chest rise and fall calmly, still, hand half-open on the mattress beside him.

Garak’s position mirrors his. Julian wonders why he’s so far away. Silly, that he should be. “What are we telling the counselors, Garak?”

“Oh,” Garak says, face clearing, looking a bit sheepish, embarrassed. “That.”

“I wish we could tell them the real reason,” Julian confesses quietly. “I hate being at odds with you.”

“We’re not at odds,” Garak says quickly. His face is carefully guarded. Julian isn’t an expert at reading Garak’s moods, though he fancies he’s one of the few that gets the closest to. “I just have to reevaluate a part of my world view.”

“Nothing’s changed.” It’s the truth, Julian thinks. He’d been hiding a part of himself for a long time, rehearsed doing it, but they’re simply physical aspects. He thinks his personality is real enough. He can’t be sure. And he dreams of that doubt often. But he hopes his personality is real. “There is something, I think, vital to the way we are raised. So often I—well, I feel like more than one person. Do you know what I mean?”

He gazes at Garak, casting for a way to condense all he feels in a simple yet potent way.

“Like I have all these disparate parts of my being and it’s impossible to-to reconcile them. I want to believe that it is not so.” He clenches his hand and sits up, legs folded under himself. Hands opening and closing, opening and closing. Nothing to hold onto. “But, isn’t it terrible to think, in my own mind, that I am someone separate from the Jules that I was? You must know what this feels like, more than, well, not anyone. Dax knows, but this is different. I’m not asking you to be honest with me. I wouldn’t wholly believe it anyhow. But tell me I’m not alone in this, at the very least.”

“You’re not,” Garak says. He sits up, less awkward than Julian had been. “You’re not alone.”

“Thank you,” Julian says after a moment and drops his head, pressing finger and thumb against his closed eyes. “Even if you’re just saying that, appreciate it.”

The steady surface of the bed dips and when Julian composes himself enough to look up, Garak’s sitting there, an annoyed expression on his face but he’s not looking at Julian. Uncomfortable. Allowing him space.

“I wasn’t just saying it.” Garak glances at him from the corner of his eye. “I know you’re not _malicious_ , but old habits die hard, and this is a very old habit. Oldest of them.”

Julian laughs wetly and nods. At his core, Garak is a distrustful person and probably capable of much more than Julian will ever know. Still, he is not infallible, and he is not unrelenting. Julian swings his legs over the edge of the bed, pressing their shoulders together and he drops his head against Garak’s, smiles privately at the way he tenses but doesn’t push him away.

“Thank you,” Julian repeats, quietly, more honestly.

****

“I just don’t feel the romance our relationship had at the start anymore.” The way Garak delivers it is so deadpan Julian doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh. “I feel like Subatoi has stopped putting effort in, and I’ve started questioning if he really loves me anymore.”

 _This_ is supposed to sell the counselors? Julian shoots Garak a quick baleful look but the counselors seem to be eating it up. They, with their highlight-streaked hair and shockingly artificial strung necklaces of flowers, put their hands on their chest, make sympathetic hurt noises, sigh. They turn to Julian, then, and Julian reels just the tiniest bit at having a row of accusatory looks leveled his way.

“He never expresses what he wants!” Julian exclaims. “It’s always a lukewarm answer with him, so I never have any idea what to do that’ll make him happy.”

More considering looks, less accusing or glaring. The counselors gather together in a circle and discuss in hushed tones. It’s hard to keep a straight face, especially when Garak closes his eyes and covers his mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort to keep himself from laughing. He stills soon but Julian still has to breathe in deeply.

Julian reaches over a moment later, grabs Garak’s hand and squeezes it. _Stop. Laughing_. Garak squeezes it back just as hard and Julian elbows him. Of course, it’s just as that moment that the imposing council of counselors turn around and see Garak holding his side with a wide-eyed moue. It wasn’t even a hard blow but Julian feels the collecting glower of all glowers from the counselors. 

“You _clearly_ need to, like, re-familiarize yourselves with your relationship,” one petite man says, voice thick and nasal. He gestures between the two of them. “This is not okay.”

“Yeah, the vibes are totally off,” a woman supplies helpfully. “We’re going to get you spiritually and physically re-aligned so that you re-discover the passion you crave.”

A lot of ‘re’s there, Julian notes.

“We’ve decided to put you on the activity plan that is guaranteed to make you re-evaluate ways to enhance your compatibility: mind, body, and spirit.” The man on the end closest to Julian hands him an accordion brochure, small and folded several times over. Julian doesn’t quite manage to grasp it well, so it unfolds all the way to the ground. It’s unexpectedly heavy and, most damning of all, at every other fold of the sheet there is an indiscreet foil package stuck to the paper.

Julian’s jaw drops and he feels his face flush as he scrambles to refold the brochure, the title large and blaring in an obnoxious red: _APHRODESIA reignite the sexiest, most passionate you there can be_.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” he stammers. “Just give us a normal schedule.”

Garak, who has a copy of the plan held tightly in his hands, is stock still, glancing between it and Julian. Julian gives him a look. Come _on._

“Yes,” Garak says at length. “This is a bit much.”

“It’s already been, like, decided,” the man says. “Trust us. By the end of it you’ll be all over each other.”

After that, despite how much hemming and hawing they do, the council still shoos them out without changing their plan. They stand outside the conference room, somehow unable to meet each other’s eyes.

“Let’s leave this in the room,” Julian says, taking the initiative. “We haven’t actually read through the plan. It might even be _fun_.”

“It won’t be fun,” Garak says, finality in his tone. “They’ll probably have us doing yoga and breathing exercises and soulfully looking into each other’s eyes.”

“We’ve already done a bit of the last part,” Julian points out.

“I dread to do another.” Again, the deadpan tone, and this time Julian doesn’t hold back from the laughter. He throws his arm over Garak’s shoulders and pulls him close, giggling into his side.

“Shut up, you morose old man.”

****

Before actually settling down to read the brochure, Julian immediately tosses it on the breakfast table and declares he’s showering off all the salt water. It’s Garak that finds himself reading the brochure instead, privately glad there is no one to witness the spectacle.

The brochure does nothing less than imply that their stay on the planet is meant to be an incredibly stimulating sexcapade, and they do, in fact, have scheduled yoga and meditation sessions, as well as sessions where they’re meant to ‘deepen their emotional connection.’ It’s trite, full of predictable language and awful innuendos. Garak wonders if this ‘plan’ has helped anyone that actually needed it. Holistic encouragement to arousal, amusing as a thought, are the least of his worries. There are few group activities, usually in the mornings and evenings. Most of them are communal meals, however the odd afternoon competitive couples event is also there. For the first time since arriving there, Garak starts to think they’ve been assigned an impossible task. He thought it improbable before. Now…

Julian walks in the room, a towel wrapped around his waist and another around his neck that he uses to wipe at his face periodically when water drips onto it from his hair. It’s an effective way of spoiling Garak’s thoughts, which were going nowhere useful anyway.

“Oh, you’re reading it.” And doesn’t Julian look far too pleased at that. Garak sets the brochure down on the table and purses his lips.

“It’s amazingly thorough,” Garak says magnanimously. “A pity we don’t actually need it and it might hinder our mission.”

Julian leers at him as he approaches, amused smile on his lips, and Garak feels the prickle of irritation again. He doesn’t bother fully drying off or putting any clothes on, or even tossing on a robe, before he leans over Garak’s shoulder, reaching down to flip through the pages. He’s not touching Garak—a hair’s-breath away—but there is still enough of a frisson for Garak to find himself blindly looking down at the brochure as well.

Julian doesn’t bother to disguise how fast he can read, skimming over the words in record-breaking time. His scent is clean from the shower, fresh like eucalyptus, and Garak absently notices how long his lashes are. 

“Hm, true,” Julian says, leaning back. “Not much group time. But there are enough gaps that we could make some. I’m sure some of the couples are lonely.”

“You certainly made enough friends last night for that to hold true.”

“Oh, please.” Julian scoffs, finally wandering away and slipping the white fuzzy robe hooked at the back of the entrance door over his shoulders. He shimmies a bit and soon carelessly tosses the towel that had been wrapped around his waist on the bed. “You made just as many as I did. Besides, if we play the part well, maybe the counselors will forgive us a little skipping.”

Julian ties the robe shut and winks at Garak over his shoulder. Garak finds it amusing that Julian thinks there would be any consequences for ‘skipping.’ They’re all adults and, presumably, have paid for the experience. No one is going to chastise them for skipping. At most, they’d endure the prodding, nasal questions from the counselors, and, perhaps, that is motivation enough.

“The wet spot will be yours tonight,” Garak says blithely and Julian looks at him with flustered alarm, confused for a second before Garak takes pity on him and looks at the towel pointedly. “Rotten.”

“Hush, you,” Julian mutters darkly as he shuffles past Garak, towel in hand, and goes out to the balcony presumably to hang it up. “You’ve been reading that brochure, what am I _supposed_ to think?”

“Our first exercises seem pretty tame, actually.” They’re far more focused on the _mind_ and _spirit_ part of ‘mind, body, spirit.’ How romantic. “Our first one is tonight after dinner.”

“Do we have to dress up again like yesterday?” Julian drifts back into the room and sits in the other chair, plucks a lychee from their haphazardly discarded platter that morning, and proceeds to pop it open. The red bumpy outside coat slips off and Julian holds the slippery, fleshy white insides between thumb, pointer, and index fingers.

“We didn’t have to do anything yesterday other than show up,” Garak points out. “But, to answer your question, no. We should probably wear comfortable clothes. I thought you read.”

“Mm.” Julian shrugs, leaning over the plate to bite into the fruit. “That’s good. Garak this is good, here, try it.”

Julian presses the half-bitten fruit right up against Garak’s mouth, other hand cupped underneath. Garak can see the kidney red of the pit shyly hiding. “Ever since the Federation repurposed the replicators, I’ve made my way through many dishes. I know what a lychee tastes-”

Julian takes the opportunity to shove harder and Garak instinctively pops the remainder of the lychee in his mouth. The skin slips from the stone easily, and even if Garak had been able to keep speaking through it, his words probably would have faded away just the same. Julian looks smug.

“If you’ve had replicated lychee from the Cardassian replicators on DS9, you haven’t truly had lychee.” Julian hums contentedly as he splits another one from its shell. “My parents never had replicated food in the house. I’d never had a replicated meal until I went to the Academy. My grandmother always kept lychee for me in the summer.”

“Funny they should have it here on Angama IV, and fresh. I doubt everything they serve is fresh.” If the dinner the night before and lunch had proven anything, it’s that there’s an overwhelming lack of Cardassian dishes to be found at the resort.

“Not everything is, I can tell, and not because of the whole”-Julian gestures vaguely above his head-“enhancement thing. I think it’s only the fruit but it’s not so funny: Angama IV was settled by humans. It was in our intelligence report. I thought _you_ read.”

“I hardly found that information worth retaining.” Garak flicks the edge of one foil condom packet, satisfied to see the way Julian flushes and his fingers twitch as he splits another lychee. “Are these brochures dated from that time as well?”

“Wouldn’t that mean their methods are tried and true?” Julian’s gaze catches Garak’s, singes him for a split-second before it flickers away. It’s Garak’s turn to flush. Touché. “Might mean trouble for us.”

“Surely an augment and a Cardassian can outsmart humans with imperialistic and entrepreneurial hubris from centuries ago,” Garak says, in an attempt to keep it light, keep the words from sticking in his throat.

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Julian says before biting into another lychee. “Hooray.”

****

The room is small, intimate, barely comparable to Garak’s rooms on the station. Attached to the roof there is a draped ceiling of deep reds and browns. The dimmed lights cast everything in a hazy softness, smoke from incense splitting the air of the room. The muggy atmosphere breathes each time it’s interrupted by a wayward night wind blowing through the large open doors. Just outside, the pull and crash of the sea beckons.

Garak and Julian sit on the floor facing each other, their legs folded beneath them. The voice of the prompter, their spiritual guide for the session, washes over them, navigates them through a series of breathing exercises, grounding exercises. Garak feels heavy, feels his lungs weigh down on him, feels the weave of the area rug at all the points of contact. Julian’s dark eyes hold, keep him fixed in place. Despite himself, Garak feels flushed, skin to aware of everything, attuned to everything. It reminds him, somewhat, of his training in the Order and that comes with a strange mess of emotional baggage. But the room is not completely dark, and Julian is a scant few inches from him. It is not quite claustrophobia clawing at his throat, making him break out in a cold sweat, but there is still a piercing sense of discomfort. Julian keeps looking at him, unerringly.

At the end of the three-hour session, they walk straight through the doors and onto the white sand. The cool of night makes Garak shiver after the humid warmth of the room. Julian presses closer and laughs lowly, ducking his head against a rough gust of wind that is all salt.

“That wasn’t that bad,” he murmurs, voice rough with disuse. They hadn’t been allowed to speak at all, only ‘become aware of each other’s physical resonances.’

“I was surprised you were able to keep quiet for so long.” Garak eyes Julian sidelong. He means for it to be a glance, but it lingers. The moon is drawing a muzzy halo around Julian’s unruly hair, making him seem a bit unworldly. A bit untouchable, unreachable. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so domesticated.”

“Agh, I know!” Julian exclaims, dragging his hands down his face and throwing them up in the air. “It was exhausting.”

“We didn’t do anything, Julian.” Garak laughs incredulously, shoving Julian gently and making him stumble in the sand. Anything for some space, for less of the light to spill onto him. “We stared at each other for three hours and breathed in smoke.”

“Garak.” Julian kicks his feet free and sits at the beginning of the slope of the promontory. The way he’s able to fold himself, compress himself until he looks smaller than all his gangly magnificence would have one believe possible never ceases to amaze Garak. Julian looks petulantly young, arms folded over his knees and looking up at him. “You are _exceptionally_ intimidating.”

Garak snorts and slips his hands in his pants pockets, rocking on his heels. “ _Thank_ you, doctor.”

“Did you discover anything new about me? Something unbeknownst to myself?” While the playfulness is there, there is a discordant note, something just off the mark. Close but not quite.

“Contrary to popular belief,” Garak says, letting his voice carry as he steps closer to the water, close enough that it rushes up around his ankles. “I don’t actually have any unnatural abilities.”

He doesn’t particularly wish he did, though Julian is inscrutable in a deceptively oblique way. Too explosive, too impulsive. Loud, brash, brave. Facetious. He’s throwing darts in the dark, hoping one will land but more than likely finding joy in the act of drawing back the arm, gripping the bird, release.

“That’s rude. What would Betazoids think? Or Vulcans, for that matter?”

“Don’t particularly care for what Betazoids or Vulcans think, frankly.” _I care what you think_ , Garak adds to himself. “Speaking of, we should be seeing if anyone is still up, acting strange.”

“Nobody is going to be up. It’s far too late. We’re the only souls out here…” Julian fades into silence and Garak turns to look at him. The water is unusually warm, basked in the heat of the sun all day and still hasn’t had the chance to cool down. Garak feels the same. No reprieve. Funny how living on a station will get one used to the cold. Will make one settle for what they can get. He hasn’t felt a heat like this since Cardassia. “Could be the only souls on the planet, doesn’t this make you think that?”

“Don’t be silly,” Garak says, for lack of anything else to say. Julian kisses hello and goodbye. Julian flits out doors with _see you laters_ and grins on his brilliant face. He carries fruits in his pockets wherever he goes, sharing them at a moment’s notice with his long fingers splitting skin from flesh. He works tiredly, doggedly, and swans through the medbay with comforting word for anyone. Forgives anyone. “I’ll head back first, since you’re clearly becoming unreasonably existential.”

Down the beach, when he is about to climb up the steps to their room, he turns back and sees Julian still sitting there in the distance, curled in on himself. He can’t help but think Julian looks terribly alone. His doing, of course, but he is not as generous as Julian, could never even aspire to be a fraction as kind. The prospect of lingering anywhere too revealing is more mortifying than Garak can ever bear to vocalize.

II.

_“I’ll lie down, fused / with what is formless, melted within the darkness, / as far as I can, secreted and alive, / becoming chaos again…”_

_Dream (repeated)_

Julian stands in a black without substance. There is no weight to it, no atmosphere at all. Julian does not sweat here. There is no breeze to ruffle the stillness. There are only his feet stepping in the infinite pool of dark, sending eddies out into the nothing. This place is unlike any place. Julian has never been here before. There’s nothing to anchor him. It is not as if he is in a lightless place because, if he raises his hands, he can see them. There is no illumination, no slant of light, but he can determine that he is not in shadow. Things are simply without rendering, as if he were in a holosuite, but there are no pale guidelines traced on the floors or walls. There is no ambient lighting. There is no thrum from the life support systems.

Dark and inky and infinite, the ground ripples when he walks. He’s got no sense of direction, or that he’s moving at all. He doesn’t know for how long he’s been walking. The only rupture in this tireless, endless, pitch-black comes from a touch at the elbow. Shadows, grazing in passing.

Julian turns and there is a boy. He’s not much of anything, really. Small, awkward in his thin body. He’s round and angular at the same time, the way boys are when their body seems to not know in which direction it wants to grow. Knobby knees, dirt-smudged cheek, eyes too big—too aware. They are dark and they hold Julian in place with an accusatory vigor.

These eyes are not unrecognizable. The hold stays; Julian does not move. They look at each other as if through a veil. Julian gets the sense that, if he focuses on the boy too hard, he’ll disappear. There’s something intangible about him. They breathe and it is in a shallow tandem. Mirror selves, until the boy crouches and the eddies of black fan out around him. He’s looking down at them with interest, as if he can see past them, beyond them. As if there is something he is noticing and Julian is not allowed to see.

“Do you like it?” the boy asks, head down, still staring at what only he knows. “Do you like living in my body?”

The boy, Jules, looks up and brushes the hair from his eyes. His voice lilts uncomfortably, unused to language. Unused to stringing together so many words into coherency. The syllabic force is on the wrong units. Yet there is no embarrassment on his face. He is steady, intent. His parents were wrong, Julian thinks. Jules wasn’t slow. Jules was never slow.

“I'm sorry,” Julian says, quiet and defeated. Jules’ gaze doesn’t waver. Doesn’t apologize. “I'm sorry,” Julian repeats, hands making abortive gestures. He wants to reach out. He wants to tell Jules he is wanted.

Jules stands again, the bottom hem of his jalabiya drips. His eyes linger. Julian gets the sense he wants to say something. Perhaps he can’t, or doesn’t have the words to. It is with sudden, oppressive guilt that Julian realizes he can’t remember much of what it was like to _be_ Jules. He is left only with the hollow impressions his parents had of him.

Jules moves toward him, slow, measured, and walks through him—a phantom that will not waste time on Julian. He doesn’t look back, not even when Julian tries to grab at him. Julian’s fingers close in on themselves, his hand passes through nothing. Through black. Jules keeps walking and, unlike Julian, seems to know where he’s going. Seems to see what surrounds him, knows what’s on the other side. No matter how fast Julian feels his legs pump and burn as he runs after the boy whose life he stole, Julian gets no closer to him. Jules walks calmly, at home in nothingness, and he never ever looks back.

****

They eat brunch with a different couple every day, compile the details, cross-reference the things they’ve heard with the thick files they spread across the breakfast table. Julian stains the papers with jelly fingers and avocado toast. During the afternoon they have their sessions. The further they progress, the more elaborate the exercises get. Julian doesn’t mind them so much. He likes the way they free his mind from words and worries.

His biggest concern at any one time is nothing more than whether he’s pushing down on Garak’s back too hard when he sits behind him, helps him fold down forward on his elbows. Garak is skittish about the close contact but not averse to it, Julian can tell. Julian soaks it up. As much as Garak will give him, he’ll take. And at night, when Garak withdraws from the togetherness, Julian goes to the sea.

He’d invited Garak, at first, but got turned down each time. At some point he figures it’s a lost cause, which is fine. In the holosuites, night swimming was never a communal activity. It was always him, spending countless hours batting through water, cleaving through it desperate to get to something on the other side. If Garak asked him what, Julian couldn’t have answered. He’s never seen the other side. Never endured that long. Doesn’t even know if there is one.

Here, in the material world, everything is finite.

He gives himself limits: half a mile—just past the rocky ridge. The lip of the water is always cold, gooseflesh breaking out, and then submersion. The swell lends the body momentum, pressure in the skull before head breaks through the surface tension and _breath_. Full lungs, salt stinging the eyes, he pushes. He dives under the nascent combers, past breakwater and crests until he is in the swill. Pitch black, not a thing to be seen or heard other than his own pulse, juddering breath, the wave crash a far thing. Craggy rock rough under his fingers, right at the neck of the beach shoot, he allows himself to look back. He sees the lights from the cabins littering the tossing black of fronds and palms in the night. He imagines Garak out on the balcony, looking for him in the waves. He swims back.

Garak says, once, that the sea whines at night while Julian’s gone. A whine is a pitiful sound, Julian thinks. The sea doesn’t whine. The sea has nothing it wants to be forgiven for. The sea, whatever sound it makes, does not let Garak sleep until Julian is back, apparently. He seems able enough to drop off immediately when Julian returns, and then Julian sleeps his few fitful hours, wakes up before the sunrise, tries to sleep again, fails.

He’d blame it on the unfamiliar surroundings, but insomnia is not new. Not particular to the planet. Before this incipient war, he used to be an easy sleeper. Despite his enhancements, he could surrender to a deep and satisfying rest with no difficulty. Now, it’s a lucky day when he finds himself waking up after dawn. A restless mind, too chatter-full, makes his lungs feel compressed—solid and sluggish in the action of aspirating.

Most nights have him sputtering into wakefulness, pulse loud and racing in his ears, a strangled wheeze in the throat. He panics, struggles for the lungfuls he should be able to take. It’s only ever a few minutes of disoriented floundering, but they’re enough to keep him awake the rest of the night. It’s never quiet on Angama IV. The waves drone through the night, and it’s the closest he gets to understanding when Garak says the sea whines. Its heavy crushing sounds are a steady beat throughout the night. They never change in pace or tone, and yet there is the building of an anticipation. It’s not quiet, but it is not noisy, either.

There is a stillness in everything, as Julian presses his cheek against his pillow and follows the curve of Garak’s shoulder with his eyes. Odd frog, warbling bird and insect sounds fill the night. The most minimal things stand out inside the netting, enclosed as they are. Garak’s ridges lay flat against his neck, arm, flank, hip. Julian reaches out with the lightest of touches and traces the smooth snake-skin with wonder. He cannot take this for granted. He cannot take this—Garak’s back so bare to him, the crest of his scaled shoulder, the flared jut of his aural ridges seen just from the periphery—for granted. At times, in the pit of night, Julian’s hands shake with the trust Garak has placed in them. It is overwhelming—likely to consume him from the inside out. The piercing feeling that whittles at the hollow of his throat makes him nauseous. He is not altogether sure of who he is, sometimes. Garak asleep by his side, as if Julian is not possibly three different people.

So much, nowadays, is ambiguous. Julian, between changelings and Jules, sometimes has trouble distinguishing who he is. The faces are all the same, and sometimes he does wonder if he is a changeling that somehow got memories implanted in him. Often, locked in the bathroom, he will pass the medscanner over himself and corroborate the readings. Yes, he’s quite human. Yes, he has blood.

Most of the time, he knows quite well that he is no one other than Julian. But, to be Julian, he first had to be Jules. At this point, Jules can’t be anything other than a boy Julian has to mourn for. In the recesses of his mind, he knows Jules must be there in subtle ways. He must still be present in gestures, mannerisms, or preferences, but there is no distinguishable voice that tells him there is a “Jules" or that there ever was one.

To come to terms with having been an unsatisfactory child from the very beginning is a heavy burden to carry. He wishes his parents had been kinder to who he was. He wishes they hadn’t taken him to Adigeon Prime and had his genetic code spliced, shredded, re-coupled, dismembered, and invariably enhanced. All he’d needed was a little patience, and a little care. He can never be sure, of course, but, then, that’s the ambiguity of it. He can never be _sure_.

****

_A memory from Before, from Jules_

He didn’t mean to but he’s cut himself, wound deep and freely gushing blood _everywhere_. He clutches his foot close, looking for anything to staunch the blood, not making a noise. Not giving away that he’s been hurt. Hadn’t felt much of anything, anyhow. Just a dull throb and mind set on the single focus that he has to deal with the situation, fumbling for a shirt, a sock, anything to press and ruin against the wound. He hobbles to the fresher, Federation-standard lighting cool and unflinching. Amsha and Richard speaking in low tones in the kitchen. Jules can picture them, his mother leaning across the kitchen island as his father peeks into the rice cooker. There is never replicator food in his home—too artificial his parents have always said, not the real thing. They like genuine things, original things. Jules doesn’t make a sound. Washes the cut, turning it under the tap of the bath as he bites the inside of his cheek. Vague sting of water running over open flesh. Not a noise, not even muffled.

Later, sprawled face-down on his bed too tired to move after half-heartedly bandaging his foot, his mother comes in the room, screams. The glass is everywhere. The blood is everywhere, droplets and careless splotches. It had run easier than Julian thought it would. He thought it was thicker, somehow.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” his father asks, frown wrinkling his forehead.

Later, on the phone with his older sister, Jules overhears him. “Cut himself bad. Didn’t even make a noise. Didn’t even cry. If it had been me, I would have let the whole complex know.”

Jules quietly closes the door, allows them their privacy.

****

Bleary-eyed and stumbling across the room, he pulls a shirt over his head without seeing which one he’s snatched from the pile on the daybed. He sits and has to close his eyes, hands out against the wall, grounding him. Vertigo sweeps through him. Not a sickness, no, but a firm hook lodged in the pit of his stomach, pulling, straining. The shirt still smells of the tailor’s shop. Still smells of incense and oils. Of Garak’s careful hands letting out and tucking in fabric. Nostalgia, bone-deep exhaustion, make him light-headed in the early morning half-light.

To settle himself, chase away the repeating dream that surges, tumbling sand and pulverizing coral against his mind, he takes the files outside and sits on the balcony. All this intrigue is a lot more boring than he thought it would be. There is a great deal of prodding and waiting and testing. Julian is used to the quick satisfaction of his lab in the medbay. Garak calls him too lighthearted—too careless here when they have a mission. But Julian thinks of the mission and something in him panics a bit. What if it happens again? What if another Julian appears? What if another _Garak_ appears?

He’d resented Garak a little, for not knowing, for not being able to tell. Garak, surely, of everyone, should have known. Should have been able to pinpoint some small nuance that would reveal the changeling’s true nature. But he, himself, can’t be sure that he wouldn’t make the same mistake. After all, it was thrilling, at first, to think of Garak as a spy. To think of him as some illicit agent of an enemy government, dangerous and astute. A two-dimensional projection straight from one of his holosuite storylines.

It has changed since then. He is apprehensive, scared, yet he also wants to peel back Garak’s layers, wants to know him well. Know him surely. Not for the thrill of it, but for the affection he has for him. That Garak should unveil him in return is a terror beyond much compare but it’s the only balm Julian thinks will reassure him.

At times, Julian fears and wonders if their relationship is not held together by pure artifice. He remembers the touch at the elbow; Jules’ dark eyes. He had not needed to say it. With a simple look, Julian knew himself to already be what he’d always suspected: an impostor. If Garak, with meticulous finger and nail, dared to unpeel him, section by section, would there’d be anything there at all, or would it just be a fragmented variety of disjointed things? Would it all be too pulverized? He’s held together in such frailty. After all, Garak had been so quick to slip the needle under his nailbed with cunning accuracy. _Computer_ , he’d snarled in passing on the Defiant. Components and programming, wire and sinew: he’s made of such disjointed things.

Despite his existential state, a much more powerful emotion overrides any doubt. He _wants_ Garak to see him. Wants, in some inalienable way, to be plain, simple, boring, unassuming. Plain, simple tailor Garak. Plain, simple doctor Bashir. He wants to be transparent for Garak. He thinks, after so long, he should be allowed this small weakness. Garak may call him foolish, hopeless, painfully _human_ , but Julian has only seen himself as someone standing on the outside—as someone distinctly in-human. He would like, for once, to be seen and told that he is what he was supposed to be. He has grown into what he was always meant to, perhaps.

****

Julian’s wire-rimmed glasses sit low on his nose as he frowns down at a datapad. His lips move soundlessly from time to time as he reads and Garak smiles to himself. The slump and tremble of his shoulders speak of a marrow-deep weariness. Garak knows it well.

“You’re going to catch cold sitting out here in just that,” Garak says as he loosely wraps a large scarf around Julian’s neck. It’s surprisingly chilly at night—like the weather needs to compensate for how sweltering it is at night. Warmth tends to linger in his scales. Julian has no such luck. “Do you even need glasses?”

He looks up at Garak, surprised at having his reading interrupted. The expression shifts into an easy smile.

“I probably shouldn’t need them, but they focus me.” He holds a fold of the scarf up to his face and closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. “Mmm, thanks. ’S warm.”

Garak fidgets, nods jerkily. “I let it catch steam during my shower.”

“So handy,” Julian says, looking up at Garak through his lashes. “Having a tailor around. I feel thoroughly pampered.”

“Nonsense.” Garak leans against the handrails, looking out at the crash of surf over sand. “My professional pride is no reason to feel pampered.”

“Maybe,” Julian says, and it sounds strange. Subdued. Disappointed, maybe, but Garak doesn’t turn to see his face. “All the same. It’s nice to feel cared for.”

“You’re cared for by many people,” Garak replies. He rubs at his chin scales consideringly. “You’ve got many friends. You make them easily.”

“I don’t, really,” Julian says and laughs mirthlessly. “I try very, very hard to make friends, and even then it doesn’t always turn out. You’re particularly stubborn.”

“Yes.” Garak turns, looks over Julian’s slumped form, datapad flat on the table and arms crossed. “Not incredibly rewarding to be my friend, I imagine.”

Julian ducks his head down, picking at loose grain of the tabletop. He’s going to get a splinter, Garak thinks. “You’d be surprised. I think you’re kinder than you give yourself credit for.”

****

It is, perhaps, most disarming to see Julian at his barest, most doggedly-tired state. Julian, ever affable, thinks he’s concealing it well. Thinks Garak doesn’t notice the cold spot next to him on the bed when Julian’s been up for hours. Garak knows the art of reducing someone to that state well. When he was young, still a boy, he would watch Tolan sitting under the wan lamplight of his workshop for hours as he whittled into wood. From raw material, something was slowly revealed. Garak had been fascinated with the process—with the idea of creating something _himself_. Even years later, Garak sometimes revisits the image of Tolan’s head bent down as he carved minute details with infinite patience. It serves as a reminder: Garak can remake himself into anything if he is nothing to begin with. He is always the raw material, never the finished product. He fancies that there’s very little one can say definitively about him. It’s how he likes it. How he’s been taught to like it. At his most private, he does sometimes allow himself to speculate. To dream, as it were, of a moment where it would not be impossible to allow himself the comfort of warm arms around his waist.

Remaking oneself means there’s little allowed to linger. He, too, is made of such disparate things. He’d like to be able to say something to ease the way Julian’s brows had creased his forehead. If he’d mentioned something similar back when they had lunches at the replimat, Garak probably would have come up with some witty reply. The silence across the room and the distance between them are so large that Garak finds he doesn’t have the heart to make light of Julian’s musing.

Something gradually shifts. Garak, under the pretense of worrying for Julian’s ability to continue carrying out the mission, decides to stop being polite. He stops giving Julian the space for privacy during the night when he wakes too soon, still smelling of seawater. He decides to be kind. In the wee hours of the night, he rouses himself fully when Julian’s movements make the bed creak. When he sits up, it to the sight of Julian made small against a wall, sitting on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest as he holds his hand up to the moonlight. The colorless down on the back of his neck gleams silver. Garak kneels next to Julian and holds his hands until Julian feels like he won’t just slip through the gaps and become a melted puddle. Julian’s gaze strikes forcibly, like its own creature that is Jules and Julian, but something else as well.

Garak thinks he’ll always remember it clearly: the look on his face, trying so hard not to cry. He looks lonely. Garak thinks, in a way, he is looking at himself. Calling for attention but still quite singular.

For a moment it is as if there is just he and Garak, together in their loneliness, suspended in a deep blue sea.

“Come to bed, my dear,” Garak says so softly, willing patience and kindness into his eyes as he pulls Julian to his broad chest. He always smells of eucalyptus after a shower—so cool and light like water—but he is solid against him. He splits the bedsheets open as if his body is a scalpel. He’s easy, soft and unguarded, and yet still a sharp thing. Still something that cuts.

Julian is solid.

****

In the bed, Julian presses close to Garak’s back, despite the misery of pendulant heat or cold. His breath erratic, he closes his eyes, presses his nose to Garak’s nape and tries to steady himself. Breath doesn’t ever come easy for Julian—it feels distinctly like being on the verge of panic because there is not enough air. Light-headed, heavy-limbed, head crackling with the sharp shards of migraine, Julian inhales in small sips. That air should feel heavy on his chest when water does not is not an irony lost on him.

He remembers the exercises of the afternoon, breathing in when Garak breathes in, exhaling when Garak exhales. He laughs shakily, noiselessly. An augment and a Cardassian should be able to outsmart this, outsmart themselves. Famous last words.

****

The rocky days calm, the island drags and swelters into the season. Julian swims through night. Julian sleeps pressed to Garak’s back and has a hard time wanting to wake up in the morning.

III.

_“is this the end point?/ Didn’t I reach it long ago, / and then didn’t I destroy it, / disappointed, offended by my own willfulness?”_

Garak and T’prinventh sit a ways off from the rest, on a patchwork of hastily gathered blankets from all the different cabins. Tall grass surrounds them. They work in silence, scraping off the fruit and then shelling the sweet nuts, letting them drop into a basket between them. She’s exacting in her words, never speaks much, but Garak likes her frankness and no-nonsense behavior. Her hands are rough with labor—she’s no stranger to physical toil. Before she met Tanar, she worked in construction on Vulcan. She’d never even thought of space travel before the starlet came to participate in the local theater festival, as part of a cultural exchange. They’d met by chance and they’d eloped soon after, though they didn’t marry until much later. A real romance story, as Julian would put it.

Julian is with Tanar and most of the others, standing to their thighs in the river, voices pitched high at how cold it is and then simply enjoying. At one point Julian looks over his shoulder at Garak and grins at him, waves him over.

“How long have you two been together?” she asks as Garak levers himself to a stand. “He must really like you.”

“Why do you say so?” This is surprising. Though the statement is said neutrally, Garak feels there is some envy in it, as well hidden as it may be. His brows climb when she shrugs, a gesture so unsuited to a Vulcan.

“He can’t keep his eyes off of you.” She doesn’t look up at Garak, just continues to peel the skin from the shell, blue pulp staining her hands as she works meticulously. “He might be talking to someone else but he always takes the time to look for you. It’s… charming—as if you’ve only just become partners.”

Garak glances at Julian and, true enough, Julian is already looking at him with a softly pleased smile on his face.

“We’ve been together for a while,” Garak says, voice distracted. After a moment, he blinks and looks down at her, excuses himself with a polite incline of the head, and pushes through grass until he stands at the riverbank.

“Look,” Julian says, delighted. He holds some squirming blue creature in his hands, waving its pincers around helplessly. “Crayfish!”

“You called me for this?” When Garak approaches, standing on a rocky outcrop, he crouches down and sure enough, there are many of them climbing over the riverbed’s mossy rocks. They pick at the stones, filter their tails, beady eyes swiveling this way and that to take in their surroundings.

“Well…” Julian’s enthusiasm dims a bit as a confused frown crosses his face. He lets go of the crayfish in his hand, the little creature swimming away as fast as it can. Garak wonders how he ever could have doubted Julian’s integrity. “Yes? Don’t be lazy.”

“Did you get lonely?” Garak asks, half teasing.

“Yes.” Julian is silent for a few beats, face drawn in seriousness. “I missed you. You’ve been with T’prinventh all day.”

Garak startles when Julian’s wet hands come up to cup his face. He gives Julian an uncertain look and Julian meets it with brows raised as he leans in. Scales burning, flushed hot and heady, Garak grabs onto Julian’s forearms with his sticky hands, fruit pulp and shell shard smearing. Julian’s smile dimples and Garak’s eyes snag on the curl of it.

“Tanar told me,” Julian whispers slow, ticklish and close, “that T’prinventh has been acting strange.”

Garak jerks, eyes wide and looking ahead, pulse too loud in his ears. His mouth, dry just minute before, fills wet with shame, embarrassment. For a second he’d thought—

“I see,” he says. “I’ll keep a close eye on her.”

The wolf whistles they get as they pull apart smart. His cheek smarts from where Julian’s daytime stubble barely grazes it. Julian doesn’t let go of him, makes a show of looking over Garak’s face and Garak can almost imagine it’s genuine. His pitch-black eyes, lashes long and soft drawing shadow onto the rise of his cheeks, roving with unspoken affection. Garak’s hands slip from Julian’s forearms and he cups Julian’s face instead.

“Wh—” is barely a sound, barely a whoosh of air before Garak stifles it with a kiss. It’s badly positioned. Hurts, in a way, until Garak turns his head, parts his lips against Julian’s hot and insistent mouth. His fingers tangle in the hair at the back of Julian’s head, pulling him into place, Julian’s hands scrambling for purchase over Garak’s own as he makes a surprised noise. Before it can become more, before Julian can push into his space as he’s so clearly angling to, Garak breaks off, breaths tremulous. 

“Be good,” he says airlessly, pulls away, ignores the wild questioning sound Julian makes, wades through grass feeling his chest tight, a sharp yank. Julian’s face, wide-eyed, dazed, flushed and lips half-parted is imprinted in his mind’s eye. Dowsing rod leading to water.

With reasonable distance between them, where Julian, hopefully, cannot entirely see it, Garak puts his face in his hands, presses against it so that he doesn’t fall apart. His fingertips smell like Julian—like sandalwood.

Like Julian who had looked hunted.

****

If T’prinventh has been acting strange, Garak is no closer to seeing any evidence of it by the time they all take the trolley back to the resort. What is for certain is that Julian keeps _watching_ him all the time. Garak feels like he’s crossed a line, maybe. Ridiculously. Either way, they don’t sit together on the way back, and Julian disappears somewhere once they arrive.

They’re all gathered at the small terracotta and tile activity bungalow at the far edge of the resort. It’s between the beach and a flush of green. Dim light comes from the tall standing torches and the carefully cultivated bonfire. The blue mountains, enshrouded in an opaque screen, can be seen beyond the crooked line of sheer cliff a ways away. Rather than the usual dinners, the resort staff have put the large stationary brick grills, to use, wood smoke sweet in the air. The smell of meat soon joins it as groups gather to talk.

By the time Garak catches sight of Julian again, changed out of the ensemble he’d used for the river, the staff have already served several glasses of wine. Julian doesn’t seem to have missed any of them, either. His face is open and rosy in the sweat of drunkenness, windswept charm set to full. Sweeping the crowd blithely, his troublesome eyes meet Garak’s and his mouth parts, hesitates, blooms into a wide smile. Close to the navel of night, Garak can see his shadow dance across the tiles with the flicker of firelight. Alone, until Julian joins him, his shirt left mostly unbuttoned and letting his skin out to the cool night air.

“Elim,” he begins, hand heavy on Garak’s shoulder. “I have a proposition.”

“I’m really starting to detest your ideas,” Garak murmurs, clutching his own wine glass close and away from Julian’s thieving hands. He can see him looking.

“No, listen. This one is good. Promise.” Julian leans forward, center of gravity walking the line between tipping and utter suspension. He’s far into Garak’s personal space, warm and trailing the subtle scent of ylang-ylang oil. Garak should not know that it’s been dabbed at wrists, behind ears, freckled across his neck. Garak should not be so _familiar_ with the weight of Julian’s arm against his back, fingers curling at his waist. It’s not a stilling grip, not a particularly tight one, but it is firm and hot and Garak feels it through his clothes as if each fingertip were its own sunspot.

“Go on then,” Garak prompts, throat tight. He sips from the wine and Julian leans his face in close so they’re not overheard.

“Laugh.” Julian plays with the buttons on Garak’s shirt, looking up at him through his lashes. “Pretend I’ve told you something amusing.”

Julian taps the button over Garak’s breastbone when he takes too long to respond and Garak’s startled laugh comes out of him loud. So loud even he is embarrassed of it and covers his mouth over it. “Why am I doing this, exactly?”

“Humor me.” Julian’s breath smells sweet, vaguely stale in that way wine does. “After you—at the river—Tanar confessed that she was _jealous_ of us. You know, Vulcans aren’t big on the whole PDA thing. I thought, maybe, if we kept being all”—Julian gestures between them—“it might provoke T’prinveth, the changeling, maybe.”

“We don’t know that she’s the changeling,” Garak points out, assuming the more level-headed position since Julian is clearly not in any condition to. Julian frowns at him.

“Well, yeah,” he admits. “But it’s the only lead we have. Everyone else seems normal and getting along just _splendidly_ with their partner.”

“ _You_ seemed normal. For months.” Garak knows it’s the wrong thing to say when hurt flashes across Julian’s face, too loud and clumsy for Julian to try to hide it. He’s not sober enough to.

“For all I know _you’re_ a changeling.” Julian’s voice is tight, controlled, and he gazes at Garak with that unfettered, searing look, as if he could divine any secret from him. It takes effort not to laugh. It’s—it’s cute. Endearing.

“I’m not a changeling,” Garak says steadily, pulling him away from the crowd and over to a stone bench. Julian sits first, legs falling open lackadaisically and arms spread across the back of the bench.

“That’s exactly what a changeling would say.” Julian huffs, a smile twitching at his lips. “All that hard work for nothing. Now everyone will think we’re fighting.”

“Unless they overheard us, they probably just saw two lovers speaking in low tones and then retreating to continue it. Passionately.” Garak joins Julian, leaning back and closing his eyes, rubbing at his temples. Julian leans his head against Garak’s shoulder and laughs softly.

“Passionately, huh?” he murmurs. He reaches down, slides his hand over Garak’s where it’s resting on his thigh. Their fingers brush together and Garak shivers.

Garak, in truth, has never been much good with alcohol. Avoids it when he can because it makes him give in to impulse. Julian is the one that gives into impulse, not him. He’s become all muddled because of this mission. A temporary lapse, certainly. He doesn’t dare to breathe in case it dispels the moment, held taut as it is. A loaded calm.

“That time on the beach,” Garak braves. “Why did you do it?”

“What time on what beach? We’re on beaches all the time, love. This whole planet is a beach.”

“Don’t be smart.” _Mortifying,_ Garak thinks. “The kiss.”

“Oh, that? Hm… I wonder…” Julian shifts and Garak can feel Julian’s gaze on the side of his face briefly before Julian sits upright. “You looked like you could use it.”

The answer makes Garak stare at Julian. “Like I could use it? A kiss?”

“Yeah, like,” Julian fidgets with his hands, looking for words. “Like it’d make you happier.”

“What kind of logic is that?”

“You’re surprisingly maidenly, Garak,” Julian says, turning the conversation around at such whip-cracking speed that Garak reels, feels his face go hot. “Do you know that when you’re happy you get this adorable little flush around your ear ridges? It’s very endearing.”

Garak claps his hands over his ears and glares at Julian. “I’m not _maidenly_.”

“Aww, boo.” Julian tugs at his hands, maddening grin making him look far too attractive with his wine-reddened lips, his eyes lidded and languid. “Let me see.”

“Away, menace!” Garak says and bats at Julian’s grabby hands. His face, cheeks burn as he stands up, puts some distance between them.

“Yes, I’m a menace,” comes the laughing reply and it’s so slick, so affectionate that it could be mistaken for smitten, if Garak wanted to dwell. “I’m _your_ menace.”

His honor and dignity are saved by the call that the food is ready. “You’re a menace that has had too much wine. Meat won’t upset your stomach will it?”

“I’m telling you,” Julian drawls. “You’re severely overestimating how much this wine has affected me, the augment.”

“No need to show off.” And it’s unconvincing, considering how Julian molds himself against Garak’s side, content to wrap his arm around Garak’s back, let his fingers curl under the hem of Garak’s shirt and softly dig into the giving flesh. Garak shivers.

“Just to be clear, are we—are we doing this?”

“Doing—?”

“The PDA thing. My plan.” Regardless, Julian’s already clinging to him like some sort of marsupial, chin digging into his shoulder and large dark eyes looking up at Garak. _Ah, what the hell_ , as Julian might say. He’s already in too deep.

“Fine.” Garak sighs. “Don’t get carried away.”

“Let’s give them something to talk about, then.” Garak only has a moment to wonder what Julian means by that before Julian taps the side of his neck. “C’mon, give me a hickey.”

Garak scrunches his face up in distaste, pulling back. “ _No_ , surely not.”

“Kiss me, then,” Julian says, slipping his hands—callused, warm, large—down Garak’s arms and holding Garak’s hands in his own. He squeezes them briefly, prompting. “Make it good.”

Garak’s not sure how he’s supposed to resist the soft warm glow on Julian’s skin from the distant flame flicker, his eyes slant-open against the sandy night breeze tousling his hair. He decides maybe he’s not supposed to.

Hands seeking the lines of Julian’s hips, he pulls him closer, quests upward for the nape of neck, the hinge of jaw. He kisses him with little in the way of finesse or build-up—can’t let himself linger. Kisses made to bruise lips until Julian’s fingers dig into his biceps and Julian bruises _back_. Though Julian is slender, vulpine where Garak is stout, he towers over him and easily frames Garak’s face with his hands. He places Garak, guides him, parts his lips and there is wet heat, a tongue licking into Garak’s mouth until air begins to catch even as he breathes through his nose. The scent of ylang-ylang goes straight to his head, makes him hum into the kiss. That won’t do—not at all, not when it’s like _this_. Garak pulls away inelegantly, runs his teeth across Julian’s jaw, leaving a trail of sucking kisses down Julian’s throat, settling in a spot high up and unmistakable as he worries the skin over Julian’s pulse point until Julian lets out these maddening little _ah, ahs_.

Julian’s lips are slick, kiss-swollen, cheeks flushed and eyes eerily bright in the dark. Garak thumbs at the mark he’s left on Julian’s neck, presses down on it and feels heat pool low in his stomach when Julian lets out a soft, breezy moan. As if it’s an afterthought.

Garak hadn’t partaken in nearly as many wine glasses as Julian and yet his head feels cottony, mouth thick. “Maidenly?” he murmurs with a quirk of the lips that is more confidence than he can attest to.

“ _Elim_.” Julian grins, brilliant and breathless, Garak’s utter undoing. “You can’t see what your face looks like. _Yes_ , still maidenly.”

He seems very self-satisfied, and Garak supposes this is a no-loss scenario for him. Julian kisses easy as anything, easy as eating lychee, and comes away from it with that magnetic laughter in his eyes. _How am I supposed to recover from this?_ Garak thinks. _And isn’t it harrowing to think of it as if it were another exile?_ The idea of Julian as some sort of home isn’t quite the same, does not have quite the same dimensions or depth, the emotional complication that comes with thinking of Cardassia, but on the station Julian was a fixed point where so much else was in flux.

Julian lets out a loud whoop, effectively rendering moot any inconspicuous rejoining the group, shattering Garak’s train of thought. It feels all the more shameful for the way the other couples eye them, some snickering. That Garak holds his head level, apparently unaffected, is a well-known outfit. Plain-and-simple smile.

Julian’s hand rests humid on the nape of his neck, thumb and pointer finger rubbing up against his ridges with alarming precision. Garak glances at Julian and Julian is all teeth, all light sheen of sweat over his upper lip. He waves at the two women, sitting in a stone alcove. They’re close to one another, closer than Garak’s seen them be. T’prinventh looks flushed, green tingeing her cheeks and ears as Tanar sits practically in her lap. If neither of them is the changeling, Garak is sorry that they’ll be interrupting.

“Clearly you’ve been having fun,” T’prinventh says with a hiccough, gaze pointedly on the rapidly darkening mark on Julian’s neck. “Oops, _excuse_ me.”

Julian shoots him a look, not at all discreet. However, it is odd. A drunk Vulcan, who could have thought. The women don’t notice the exchange, T’prinventh too busy distracting Tanar with the way she leans forward and pushes a few loose hairs back behind Tanar’s ear. Tanar looks shyly delighted with the progression of things, and Garak feels embarrassed to be intruding at all. He elbows Julian and points away from them with a nod of the head. Julian, undeterred, takes a seat and tugs Garak down with him.

“Do you mind if we join you?” Julian asks, gaze flitting between the two ladies. T’prinventh looks like she couldn’t care less, but Tanar gestures generously across the stone table. “Is she alright?”

The question is about T’prinventh, but Julian asks Tanar. T’prinventh chooses that moment to duck her face against Tanar’s neck and declare, loudly, that she smells _wonderful_. Julian stifles a laugh, badly, grabbing Garak’s hand and squeezing until it’s painful. It hurts physically but it pierces a part of Garak that is wholly emotional—a gesture that says _we are together, in on the joke_ and _please be my anchor so I can behave properly_. Garak squeezes back because there is nothing else he can do. He squeezes back because he wants so very badly to be in on the joke, together with Julian.

“Y-yeah,” Tanar squeaks, pulling T’prinventh from her. “Maybe I should get her back to the room? But we haven’t even tried any of the barbecue.”

“I only want to try _you_ ,” T’prinventh says with a smirk that causes all brows around the table to go up. “You are always gone most of the day.”

“Did you, by any chance, have chocolate?” Julian tries carefully, addressing T’prinventh this time, the tremor of laughter not entirely gone from his voice. Her expression shifts to suspicious irritation immediately as she glances at him dismissively. She nods after a moment and her face says she’s run out of patience for him, for his questions. With a glare, she deems him uninteresting and no matter how he tries to engage her, she’s completely wrapped up in Tanar.

“Chocolate, doctor?” Garak asks Julian quietly. Julian nods and seems troubled, more sobered up. “Is that a well-known fact?”

“Not really.” Julian leans back, crossing his arms. “The changelings may have extensive information, but Vulcans are notoriously private and it isn’t something that would be said in polite conversation. So, unless witnessed, I don’t think they would know to act like this.”

Ah. So they’ve interrupted them for no reason. Garak sighs, long and drawn out. Maybe if he begs it to, the changeling will simply appear. Just to spite Garak, personally, in the pitiful situation he’s landed himself in.

The sound of breaking glass is loud and startling, and when Garak looks up there’s glass shattered across the tabletop and floor, Tanar’s hand outstretched, a cut along her forearm. T’prinventh has a horrified look on her face, where she’s half in Tanar’s lap. Julian is quick to jump into action, taking off his shirt and wrapping it around Tanar’s arm. He tells T’prinventh to keep pressure on it.

“I’ll go run to our room and get my medkit,” he says, already halfway out of his seat. “I’ll have you good as new in just a second, yeah?”

“No!” Tanar exclaims forcefully. So much so that even T’prinventh seems taken aback. “No, I’m _fine_. Thank you.”

A look of bewildered confusion crosses Julian’s face and he looks torn, like he’s going to leave and get his kit anyway. “But, it won’t hurt at all. It’ll only take a second.”

T’prinventh, to everyone’s dismay, starts to cry quietly. Watching a Vulcan cry is just _wrong_.

“It’s muh-muh-my fault,” she wails. “If I hadn’t— _oh_ , I’m _so_ sorry. Tanar, _t’hy’la_. I promised to keep you safe. But I made you—”

Tanar smiles tightly at Julian and Garak, rubbing T’prinventh’s back consolingly. “It’s nothing personal, Subatoi. I’m not fond of doctors. I’ll deal with it on my own.”

The quickness with which she leaves, pulling a drunken blubbering Vulcan behind her is beyond impressive. Garak and Julian, left in the wake, remain suspended in a paralyzed, shocked silence.

“I should—” Julian begins and then grinds to a halt. “Garak. Garak, I didn’t actually see the blood.”

“What do you mean? You wrapped your shirt around the cut. Of course you saw blood.”

“Yes, but I—there wasn’t any blood. Garak, _there wasn’t any._ ”

****

The plan is as follows: they’ve saved some of the meat and vegetables from the barbecue on a plate. They’ll go snoop around the ladies’ room, see if they spot anything suspicious, set up the receptors for the newest prototype of the quantum stasis field generator, bring the leftovers as an excuse in case they’re caught. Phasers set to highest stun, just in case. Flawless.

Or, it should be, except they don’t predict for either of the women to come back out of their room once they are inside. A preliminary survey of the grounds shows their cabin is sufficiently far away from the rest that the risk factor is near-minimal. They’re at the end of a narrow alcove on one side of the room, setting up a receptor when they hear the door click open. Luckily, the door is at the far end, not immediately next to the alcove, so Julian and Garak have a few split seconds to come up with something. They abandon the receptor at the end of the alcove, hoping their diversion will be enough to hide it.

There’s a brief tug-of-war over the plate of food in Garak’s hands before Julian snatches it away and sets it at the opening of the alcove, still out of view, as if they’ve put it down as a forgotten afterthought. He flips them, so he’s the one closest to the wall and wraps a leg around Garak’s waist, the other slotted smoothly between Garak’s own.

“Grab me,” he hisses. Garak stares at him dumbfoundedly and Julian yanks him close, guides Garak’s hand—Garak balks—to his ass and raised thigh. Julian pulls Garak into a kiss that is too hurried to be anything less than teeth and awkwardly flailing hands, but there is something so thrilling about it, like the stakes in the holosuite but so much more real. Garak’s fingers digging into and squeezing his backside are undeniably _very_ real. 

Julian shifts and his grip on Garak’s elbows tightens because there is _friction,_ rough and close and burning. He’s dizzy with want, wants to lean in and mouth at the line of scales on Garak’s jaw. Wants to turn this into more than a perfunctory diversion.

The steps stop. Start moving away. Julian pulls out of the kiss, pulse loud in his ears as he strains to listen. The door opens again, closes, there are no more steps outside. Julian deflates, closing his eyes, but they immediately snap back open again when Garak clears his throat.

“ _Christ_ , sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Julian lets his head fall to Garak’s shoulder. He’s hard, and he’s pretty sure Garak is too. Interesting? Maybe, but not now. “Fuck—let me just— _move_.”

There’s some awkward, wide-legged maneuvering before they’re left standing across from each other wordlessly.

“Haha,” Julian laughs nervously, rubbing his hands together. “Was that a phaser in your pocket or were you ha—”

“It’s a phaser.” Garak glares at him, ear ridges darkening. “Let’s finish here, doctor.”

“Mm,” Julian hums agreeably.

They move through it wordlessly, giving one another wide berth. In the end, Julian’s the one that goes to the door and knocks on it, plate in hand. After a minute, Tanar appears, face sleepy and in a light silk night shift Garak would have some choice words about. She frowns down at Julian, antennae flicking back.

“ _What_ are you doing here?” Tanar asks suspiciously, holding her arm out of view. His shirt is gone from it, Julian notices absently.

Julian blinks owlishly in mock innocence and gives his best, patented Dr. Julian Bashir smile. “Well, you said you wanted to stay for the barbecue. Elim and I saved some for the both of you. Consider it, an apology, of sorts.”

She eyes him a second, gaze taking him in from head to toe as if to evaluate whether he has any medical devices on him. Then, she relaxes visibly and accepts the plate from him. “Thank you… Sorry for the mess and the-the rudeness.” She laughs mirthlessly. “I just _really_ hate doctors.”

“Believe it or not, I’m not too fond of them either.” At her incredulous look, he laughs. “It’s why I became one. Figured I could do some good, maybe.”

“That’s… noble. Not my approach, but noble.” She seems unsure, as if debating whether or not to let him in.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—?” Julian offers.

“No, no.” She shakes her head, loose silver hair slipping from her shoulders. She really is super gorgeous. Oh, well. Maybe in another life. “I’m quite sure. Again, thank you.”

“Alright, you take care.” He starts walking off slowly until he hears the click of the door and then he sprints to Garak’s side.

“Well?” He tries to get a glance of the readings on the remote, but Garak’s hovering over it, double-checking what he sees. After a tense wait, Garak shakes his head.

“If you didn’t see it start to take effect while you were talking, it’s not likely to be either of them.”

Julian groans and collapses against the wall, pressing his palms to his eyes. “Let’s—Let’s stick around a while, see if they start feeling restless.”

****

In the end, neither T’prinventh nor Tanar are changelings, as far as Julian and Garak can spy. Tanar goes to sleep fairly early, T’prinventh having immediately collapsed to bed upon arrival, and neither of them show any sign of discomfort after half an hour. Disgruntled, uncomfortable, stifled by the sweat and swatting mosquitoes away by the dozens, Julian and Garak pack up and head back to their room. It starts raining midway, steadily soaking through their clothes, plastering their hair to their foreheads. It’s a heavy, unrelenting, solid sheet of torrential water, as if the sky has been holding back and suddenly can no longer do anything other than release in one heaving exhale. The hot air of the day meets the rising cold of the night and the wind croons in the whispering treetops.

Julian shivers, the sand sticks to his calves and feet. The tech, luckily, is waterproof and not likely to malfunction the next time they need it. The mood is grim, the both of them silent and lost in their thoughts. The one lead they had proved to be nothing. Soon, Julian knows, it is possible that things will dissolve into paranoia. At least it is for certain, from the stakeout, that Garak isn’t a changeling. Not that he ever considered the fact, but still.

Before climbing the steps to their room, they wait out the worst of the rain under the cover of the barn below it. No animal is in it, but it still smells musky, stale as if long left into disuse.

“I take it you won’t swim tonight,” Garak says, wringing his hair out with a moue of distaste at the state of his clothes. Their ink is running. Julian remembers when Garak had first gotten the cloths for them—special order, hand-washable.

“No,” Julian confirms. “Too late. Besides, the sea will be unreliable tonight.”

“The sea is unreliable every night,” Garak counters and slides down to a sit against the wall. Julian walks over tiredly and joins him. They are pressed together from shoulder to thigh, a warm line of body heat as the wind howls outside.

“True, but I trust it normally. A restless sea is an ugly sea.”

***

In the dream that visits him that night, Jules swims ahead of him, underestimated sickly body cutting water with confidence. Lungs pumping like bellows, Julian calls out to him. Asks him where he’s going. Tells him it’s too far, they have to turn back. Jules doesn’t listen, doesn’t turn back. The choppy waves get colder and colder and Julian sees less and less. Progressively loses sight of the shore. In a previous dream, Julian had fallen behind, gotten swept under the surface and had simply been too waterlogged and tired to continue. With quiet, beckoning, saving hands, Jules had pulled him up and dragged him to shore. His dark eyes had hovered above Julian, dripping down saltwater and kelp in his hair. He hadn’t said a word. He’d beat on Julian’s chest until the water burst from his lungs and he heaved onto the shoreline, palms raw from sand drag.

In this dream, Julian swims, struggles until burning, until his limbs feel like lead. He swims past the breaking point—not the breakpoint of the waves, his own personal breaking point. He swims past what the doctors on Adigeon Prime tell him he should be able to. He’s been enhanced, but he’s not undefeatable. Still, Jules kicks ahead with his underdeveloped legs, with his toothpick-thin arms. He’s like nothing Julian knows or pretends to know. He’s a parallel line drawn, a possibility. In a mirror universe, Jules still exists, maybe. In the dream, Jules swims out, forever untouchable but for the moments where he is forgiving. Where _he_ decides to reconcile with the Julian that survived.

At some point, Julian realizes that just as he will never converge with Jules, he will never know what’s on the other side of this long, dark swim. Punishing. It is not for him to know. It is not his journey. He stops swimming, treads through water as Jules gets further and further, no signs of flagging or tiring in his frail body. Julian has wanted, always, to wrap Jules up in a cotton blanket, keep him warm and tell him that he is needed, desired. A necessary presence. But perhaps Jules never wanted or needed that. Jules never wanted to be coddled. Jules is resentful that he is not Julian, but he never wanted to be coddled.

The rain begins to fall, droplets pricking the turbulent stone surface of the water. Rather than worry, rather than think of how the sea could swallow Jules, Julian turns back. Julian heads for shore with his aching muscles, burning lungs, stinging eyes, ragged breaths, pulse too loud. He kicks through the swell and the uneven combers of the whining sea, though he no longer can tell in which direction the shore lies. 

It’s the last time he sees Jules. But only because Julian stops chasing. If he wanted to, he knows he could meet Jules in the water. They could swim, Julian at his heels, until Julian can swim no longer.

****

Waking to scrabbling breath, cheeks wet with tears, Julian wonders about this grief, this great outpouring that makes him shake and curl into the sheets, quietly weeping. At length, he feels Garak’s hands uncurl him from his tension. Feels himself pulled to a warm steady calm, head cradled against a constant rise and fall. It is not the sea, not so chaotic—measured. Warm. Cloves and something else. There is a voice that hushes him, tells him he’s alright. That he is not alone.

IV.

_“So, within your shaping arms / I pour myself, small and immense, / serene given, restless given, / unending developing motion.”_

The large ceiling fans _wop wop_ their blades slowly as down below, on the hardwood floor of the loft, couples frustrate the tempo of the song playing from tinny speakers. Garak is not much of a dancer, so he’s secluded himself in a corner, holding a glass of syrupy juice that has a small paper umbrella stuck in it. It’s festive, quaint in that way that old Earthern films are. Julian’s honey golden kaftan stands out from the rest of the crowd dressed in more demure colors. The shapeless drapes, pooling all the way down to the floor and not giving any hint of Julian’s figure, should be unflattering. Somehow Julian, suffused with youth, still manages to turn heads, as he does anywhere he goes. Usually for being too loud, but Garak doesn’t delude himself to think it isn’t also because there is something unignorable about Julian.

Looking like the benevolent rulers of the whole retreat, Julian speaks animatedly with Merle and Xavy, hands gesticulating and then twitching each time he hunches in his shoulders to laugh. It’s not hard to tell when he receives a compliment because his head will shake from side to side just the briefest bit, chin dipping bashfully as if he humbly rejects it before it’s even said. One such times, he catches Garak’s eyes across the room. Something in him seems to relax, face falling into serene warmth. Garak can’t meet that kind of expression for very long so he raises his glass in acknowledgment and then takes a sip from it as an excuse to divert his gaze.

If he weren’t so intent on surveying the room for a new set of possible candidates–moping—he might speak to T’prinventh and Tanar again. While Tanar looks radiant, satisfied and rosy-cheeked, T’prinventh has studiously been avoiding both he and Julian since the events of the barbecue. Garak figures she is embarrassed and can sympathize somewhat, even if he thinks Vulcans keep themselves far too rigidly. Garak never shows all of his cards, but it is useful to be able to put on many masks rather than the one of plain indifference that the species purports to favor.

He envies the ability a bit, though, because Garak doesn’t know how to stop the pace of this terrifying closeness he feels increasing every day. It barrels down its own fretwork, entirely independent and unheeding any stopgaps Garak tries to put in its way. He and Julian flow into each other’s spaces with an alarming intensity, filling up the divots, soothing the tremulous quiet hours with patient hands. Always orbiting around each other in a room. Garak wonders if Julian is as highly aware of Garak as Garak is of Julian.

****

_Hours before_

They sit across from each other drowsily as the light expires. It’s been a few weeks and their mission doesn’t have even a single lead. Garak can feel it’s starting to weigh on the both of them, the frustration and tension of it. The underlying strange frustration and tension between them.

Julian’s elbow is on the table, palm against his head as he hunches over the pages spread over the table in piles. Between his pointer and index finger, bobbing unsteadily, he holds a pen. His glasses are smudged from the times he’s reached up under them to rub at his eyes. He’s tired, unshaven and looking a bit restless. Garak hasn’t noticed him lacking sleep or waking up early as of late. No nightmares after the last particularly memorable one.

“I mean, I don’t know what else to do at this point.” Julian presses the bobbin clicker of the pen against the bottom of his lower lip. “I don’t particularly like this thing, you know.”

It’s the tenth time Julian’s said as much. “Frankly, I think we should have done this from the beginning. It might have saved us some time.”

“I don’t like this plan. I think it’s cruel.” Julian sighs, scrubbing his hands through his hair in frustration, leaving it a disarranged mess of curls. Julian’s moral and ethical qualms surrounding the field generator are what have made them hold off on simply putting the receptors around the grounds of the resort, activating it, and waiting. “What if there’s not even a changeling here? What, then?”

“Then, my dear,” Garak says, leaning in to catch Julian’s wild and weary gaze, “we enjoy the rest of our Starfleet-mandated vacation, and we return to the station having completed our mission with positive results.”

Julian leans back in his chair, slumped, legs falling open in careless grace. “Fine.” He’s silent for a few seconds, glossy unseeing eyes on the papers. “If we do this, we do it my way.”

****

“Why are you here, all alone? Terribly depressing.” Julian sits down heavily, knocking his knee against Garak’s playfully.

“We can’t all be prepared to socialize charmingly all the time.”

“Aww, were you lonely?” Julian asks, dimpling mischievous grin curling around his words. “Jealous?”

“No, of course not,” Garak says, biting and clipped. Even as he says it, he can feel the mood shift, sour somewhat. “This is all... illusory. No reason to be jealous.”

“Right.” Julian pauses, brow knitted as he fidgets his hands in his lap. “I would have been jealous. Not as an act.”

Of all possible answers, this brings Garak up short. _Why?_ “I’d be flattered at my ability to sweep you up in the moment like that.”

Julian splays his hand out on the tablecloth, thoughtlessly flattening wrinkles, not meeting Garak’s surely wild and perplexed gaze. Surely he isn’t able to keep his confusion off his face, though he thinks he’s doing well with his words.

“I’ve not been _swept up_ in anything,” Julian says. “It wouldn’t be a thing of the moment. I simply would have been jealous.”

“You’re easily swayed, then.”

“No,” Julian says, long and elongated as if speaking to someone particularly dense and unwilling to see the answer. “You know better than anyone that I am not easily swayed.”

Bereft of knowing what he should say, how he’s supposed to reply, Garak retreats. “I wasn’t jealous.”

“So you’ve said.” Julian looks up at him, then. “I heard it perfectly clear the first time.”

 _So then why all the followup?_ Garak wants to ask. _Why all the hypotheticals?_

The remote in his pocket vibrates and Garak ignores the strangely pained expression on Julian’s face in favor of pulling it out. His grip on it tightens and his head shoots up again to scan the room. The other guests seem relaxed, casual, not even in the smallest bit of distress, is what Garak thinks until—he sees one of the counselors make an apologetic face and wave at his coworkers. Though he can’t be sure—the low lighting everywhere does him no favors—he thinks the counselor’s skin is prickling in a thin sheen of sweat as he hastily heads to the door.

“We’re leaving now.” Garak grabs Julian by the wrist.

“Wh—Elim!”

Julian’s stumble behind him kicks up into a run to match Garak’s as they push through the doors. Garak looks both ways down the hallway until he spots the counselor as he rounds a corner.

“You think that’s—?” Julian hisses out quick, breathless and desperate. Garak nods tightly and Julian shakes off the grip Garak hadn’t been aware he still had on his wrist. He slips his hand in Garak’s instead and smiles, face set in determination. Garak squeezes.

They catch up with the changeling as he’s fumbling with the keys to his room, cursing under his breath. Up close, Garak can’t control the startled laugh that stutters from him.

“ _You!”_ he and Julian exclaim simultaneously, looking at the wide-eyed, heavily sweating man before them—their session leader with the weirdly sensual voice.

“Gentlemen?” The man pauses his movements, looking between them, enough confusion wrinkling his brow that it could be good enough to convince one of innocence. But he looks far too bodily uncomfortable for it to be believable.

Garak surges forward and pushes the sleeve of the man’s shirt up, exposing his flaky skin. “Ah, under our noses the whole time, doctor.”

The changeling jerks, expression turning dangerous, and he swiftly twists his arm in Garak’s hold, distraction enough for the elbow he lands to Garak’s collarbone followed by a destabilizing kick to the side. Garak lands on his knees with force but he has no time to retaliate before the changeling swings his arms wide and claps them over the sides of Garak’s head, two blows that make Garak cry out, sound an explosion in his ears. It takes him to the ground. Dizzy and head ringing, Garak fumbles for his phaser, but Julian’s there first, sweeping the changeling’s feet from under him and tackling him to the ground in a flurry of golden cloth and kicking legs. They struggle, the changeling flailing for any possible purchase on Julian but Julian holds fast until, panting, they lay still.

“We’ll be taking you back to our station, DS9, for a brief series of questions. If you cooperate, you’ll be permitted to revert to your liquid state.”

The changeling begins to struggle again and this time he’s able to destabilize Julian, his head hitting the wall with a sickening _thud_. His phaser is kicked from his hands, far down the hall, and the changeling takes off down the hallway at a sprint.

“ _Damn_ ,” Julian grits out, scrambling for his phaser.

Garak, vision made double, takes aim. The first shot misses, the second glances off the changeling’s elbow and makes him stumble, the third lands home. The changeling wobbles in place before he crumples to the ground. Garak lets his body go slack with a groan, slowly pushing himself up until he’s sitting. His eyes are closed to avoid his swimming vision as much as possible. Soon, he feels warm hands tilting his head. When he finally feels able to open his eyes, Julian smiles at him softly.

“Hey,” Julian says. “You took some pretty bad blows.”

“Not the worst I’ve had to endure.” Garak grimaces as Julian’s hands unbutton the collar of his shirt and slide under the fabric, exposing the bruising area.

“Maybe not, but let’s get you seen to, yeah? We can treat this before it gets too bad for the equipment I brought with me.” Julian helps him to his feet and Garak pauses, staring at Julian’s hands.

“You’re _shaking_ , doctor.” Garak searches Julian with his eyes, tamping down the panic he feels up his heartrate. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I—” Julian laughs wetly. “I’m fine. I was just—so scared, Garak… I think I’m ready each time but each time I get scared.”

“I won’t hold it against you.” Garak slides his hands down Julian’s arms, squeezes his hands and leans in to press their foreheads together. Julian’s eyes flutter shut at the contact, tension all around his mouth and jaw. Garak’s lips quirk into a smile despite it. “The guided meditation has come in handy more times than I care to admit.”

Julian barks out a laugh and gently applies more pressure against Garak’s forehead before pulling away. “If only the changelings wanted to be counselors at therapeutic retreats for lovelorn couples.”

Garak’s left in charge of restraining the unconscious changeling while Julian retrieves the transportation receptacle they’ve brought with them, left abandoned in the ballroom. The moment Julian returns and Garak turns off the field generator, the changeling reverts to its gelatinous state and they gather it up as securely as possible. Garak pretends not to notice the way Julian keeps glancing at him, as if to check-in, to see if Garak is truly holding up. The attentiveness of it makes Garak hurt in other ways, more insidious ones. Julian never lets go of Garak’s hand all the way to their room.

****

Garak is strangely quiet the whole time Julian tends to his wounds. It’s not often that Julian has the chance to take Garak into his care. Garak is notorious for avoiding the medbay, but here he is subdued, lost in thought as Julian runs the dermal regenerator over his collarbone and tilts his ears to the light. Julian uses an auriscope to see the superficial damage and then runs the medscanner over the areas for good measure.

“Well,” Julian says, folding his tools back into the case. “It doesn’t look like you’ll have any lasting damage. I can administer a hypo for the pain, if you want. ”

Garak smiles at him, chagrined, and shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. You’ve done enough.”

Their legs knock together and Julian drops his hand to Garak’s knee. He slides it up and down in a gesture meant to reassure, but Garak overlays it with his own hand. He leans in, gaze dark and intent, making Julian still with bated breath.

“You’ve been wincing,” Garak says as he reaches up with his free hand, cups the side of Julian’s face, cards fingers through his hair until he touches a spot that makes Julian gasp. White-hot pain flares behind his closed eyes. “You’re the doctor and yet you’re always so irresponsible with yourself.”

The words barely register, but, in all fairness, Julian _hadn’t_ noticed anything wrong before. Adrenaline, he supposes. Garak is quick to remove his touch from the tender spot but he keeps his hand on the side of Julian’s face. Julian feels vaguely nauseous and is thankful for the extra support, embarrassed and praying fervently that he isn’t sick all over the both of them. Garak inches closer until Julian’s face is pressed against the solid line of Garak’s shoulder, until Garak wraps both arms around Julian and rubs up and down his back. Julian hums gratefully, nuzzles into Garak and rests until the vertigo abates.

“Is it bloody?” he asks, words smothered against the cool, smooth scales of Garak’s neck.

“No,” Garak says and he sounds far away, fuzzy. “Just swelling.”

“Okay, good.” Julian fumbles blindly for the case in his lap, unwilling to surrender the closeness. He feels around for the medscanner and pulls back enough to hand it to Garak. Garak, moves to get up and Julian holds him back desperately, tugging.

“No, just—” Julian flushes and clears his throat, tries to better his croaky voice. “Here? Tell me if I have a concussion.”

Garak eyes him for a moment and nods. Julian resettles himself against Garak happily, tired, relieved, hot in the face.

“You have a light one,” Garak informs him after a moment. “Should be fine after some rest. Doctor’s orders.”

“Mm. Thank you. I’ll follow them very dutifully.”

****

When Julian finally awakens, late in the afternoon of the next day, he’s alone in the bed. The skylight’s been left open, and he feels sun-drenched, sultry heat making him both cool and hot in the sweaty creases. Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he gets up and pads quietly to the open doors of the balcony. Garak stands shirtless and sleep-mussed, leaning on the balustrade of the balcony and looking out at the fan palms, at the stretch of beach glimmering beyond the slope of hill. 

“I am so unreasonably in love with you right now.” It slips out of Julian with no prelude, no fanfare. It slips before nervousness, or hesitation, stammer or touch. In the raucous noise inside his head, it’s the one thing Julian knows for sure.

He ducks his head, smiling privately as he approaches and braces his elbows on the balustrade. He half-closes his eyes against the gentle wind, the setting sun showering them in a golden pin light. It’s odd, a bit. Nothing like his conquests on the station, at any rate. It’s all about showing off and listing a long array of accomplishments suited to impress and cause baited _oohs_ and _ahhs_. He sort of wishes he had something more witty to say, or sexy, even. Not that Garak is just a conquest. Maybe it’s alright.

He hazards a look at Garak and all the nervousness he hadn’t felt when he spoke suddenly crashes into him. For no bad reason, he thinks, for no justified reason at all, because Garak is looking at him wide-eyed, flush crawling down his ridges. His gaze is fixed, as if Julian is something foreign.

“I'm not a changeling,” Julian says with a nervous laugh. “Should I yell it? Was it not clear?”

“No!” Garak exclaims, surging forward as if to stop Julian and Julian grins, soft and easy. “Don't—Don’t yell.”

“Okay,” Julian says, hands raised. “Okay. I won’t yell.”

“Thank you.” Garak deflates, relief radiating from him. His gaze flicks down the line of Julian’s body and back up again, suspicious still. “Are you concussed?” 

“I mean…” Julian scrunches up his nose. “What exactly am I supposed to say to that?”

“This could be a product of all the blood rushing to your head.” Garak is hedging, Julian realizes.

“Could be,” Julian replies easily, making his approach slow enough that Garak can turn him away, reject him, if he wants. Julian hopes he doesn’t want that.

“Are you—going to kiss me?”

Julian’s brows rise steadily. The longer he withholds his answer, the more Garak seems to fidget and flush. “Do you not want me to?”

“Wouldn't ask if I didn’t want you to,” Garak mutters, averting his eyes sulkily, frown creasing his forehead. _Cute_ , Julian’s mind supplies helpfully.

“Okay,” Julian says softly, crossing the distance and cupping Garak’s face in his hands. Garak’s blue eyes, pupils made shards, skitter across his face, as if they can’t decide where to settle. His hands are firm on either side of Julian’s waist. “I'll kiss you.”

“Hurry up,” Garak snaps, cut off into a yelp as Julian presses a smile against his lips. He waits for Garak to tilt his head, the height difference doing wonders for the way Julian’s able to sink his fingers in the feathery hair at Garak’s nape.

Garak may be small by Cardassian standards, but he is sturdy, and yet in Julian’s arms he pulls in easily. Lets himself be caged against the balustrade as he parts his lips and Julian worries the bottom one with his teeth. Garak’s hands push up under the hem of Julian’s shirt, singeing across his back. Julian pulls back to breathe, laughing a little deliriously in the space between them, their foreheads pressed together. Garak doesn’t give him long to take in the way he looks—lips moist and kiss-red, hair disheveled—before he pulls Julian in again. Less soft. More demanding. More determined and skilled until the heat pools, makes it heady in a combination of _Garak_ and, probably, airlessness. He hasn’t exactly been counting the seconds. Garak presses his thumbs against Julian’s hip bones and Julian gasps, whines, tumbles into laughter as his legs shake.

“Sounds nothing like an ocean,” he mumbles against Garak’s lips breathlessly.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Garak pulls him into the bedroom, never letting the distance between them widen by much. “My God, you speak all the time.”

“Are we using the—?” Julian asks as he’s unceremoniously pushed onto the bed, falling on his back only to prop himself up on his elbows.

“The condoms? Yes, you irritating, frustrating, tease of a man.” Garak wastes no time in yanking the brochure from the breakfast table, trailing a billowing paper accordion until Julian finds himself with a lapful of Cardassian. “We're using the condoms.”

“Woohoo!” Julian slides his hands up Garak’s thighs, toying with the stretchy fabric of his shorts tensed over soft giving flesh and scale. The blue haze of arousal darkens Garak’s skin all the way down to his stomach. “I didn’t mean to tease.”

“I thought I would die.” Garak helps Julian pull his shirt off when it gets stuck over his head and, after some inelegant flailing, it’s tossed and forgotten. Garak is shimmying out of his shorts when Julian stills him.

“Why're you so… frantic?”

Garak’s flinch could be a thunderclap with how it seems to draw everything into an eerie stillness. He blinks at Julian uncomprehendingly, frozen. “Are we not—?”

“Yes, but”—Julian blows out an explosive, frustrated breath as he rakes his hands through his hair—“Come here.”

Julian pats the bedspace beside him and Garak, strangely meek and subdued, slides from his lap and lies there on his side, facing Julian. Julian curls toward him and smiles reassuringly, reaching out and resting his hand on Garak’s waist. He runs his fingers up and down his side.

“Hey, I’m not running away, yeah?” Julian props himself up, leans over Garak to kiss him again, slow drag and catch of lips. “'M not going anywhere, so stop trying to make this end early. And stop looking at me like that.”

“You’re confusing.” Garak looks at Julian testily and Julian snorts. “I’m serious! You keep treating me with-with gloves. I’ve had enough of gloves.”

“Well, if you weren’t so damn quick to overthink things, then _maybe—“_

Garak cuts him off with a long groan, rolling onto his back and pressing his hands to his face.

 _“_ Respectfully, my dear,” he says, loudly. “ _please_ do get on and let’s come before I age another five years!”

The silence rings in the aftermath and Julian can see Garak blushing under his hands. He tries, very valiantly, to keep it contained in the way his body shakes, but he can’t help it when he bursts into laughter and flings himself onto Garak, kissing over his hands. “I thought you didn’t want to yell?”

“I swear—“

“Shh.” Julian pulls the obstructive hands down to Garak’s chest and rests his chin on them. “Promise I won’t tease. Teach me how to touch you.”

“A good start would be— _oh,_ that’s good. That’ll do.”

“I thought so.” Julian isn’t sure, exactly, what Cardassians have in their pants—terribly private as they are—but, well, tried and true methods, he thinks as he slips his thigh between Garak’s two incredibly warm ones. Garak’s hands fly up to grip his waist, a pressured weight that makes Julian grind down and hang his head, thumbing at the side of Garak’s neck as they start up a rhythm. Feels kind of young, kind of juvenile to be doing the whole clothed desperate rutting thing, a thought Julian sharply abandons at a particularly well-placed push and pull. _“Stars_ , Garak.”

Garak’s eyes gleam up at him and he wets his lips. His fingers reach up to tangle in Julian’s hair, pull him down to a hot slide of lips. _Stars_. Julian drags his teeth over his lips, over his jaw and Garak stretches his neck out, pushing his head against the mattress with closed eyes. Ragged breaths canter into tugging hands against bare skin, Julian blanketing Garak and the last dregs of sunlight framing their meeting of bodies.

“Should’ve—taken off our pants or something,” Julian stammers at the slide of Garak’s damp hands under the waistband of his shorts, over the rise of his backside. “’S not going to be cute.”

“I think we’ll manage,” Garak says, pressed right against his lips, and pulls the waistband, letting it snap back into place. Julian gasps, pushing close, heat flashing lightning-quick through him and the pressure too much as he shudders against Garak. His fingers clench in Garak’s hair, head dizzy, unmoored. As his pulse flutters, his movements slow to a tremulous halt. “You—?”

“Yeah,” Julian says with a breathless laugh. He rests his sweaty forehead against Garak’s cheek. “Sorry, give me a second.”

Turns out, Garak is far closer than either of them expected. When Julian slips his hand between them, under the lip of Garak pants—never forget the way Garak arches up into the touch, the way his hands slide from bicep to shoulder, _whimpers,_ isn’t that a sight—it takes only a few fumbling strokes until Garak gasps out his name. Julian wipes his hand off on Garak’s soft lower belly, snickering. Garak grimaces, juddering breaths shaking them both.

“Disgusting, doctor,” Garak says, looking at him through half-lidded eyes that don’t look all that put off. Julian’s about to retort when something has him make a sound of disappointment and sit upright.

“Oh, _shoot_ ,” Julian exclaims. “The condoms. We didn’t use them.”

“I guess we’ll just have to go again.”

****

Lazing in the smothering heat, bodies close despite the sweat, despite the fact that they’ve just showered and the effort will go to waste, Julian runs his fingers over the bulkier scales trailing down Garak’s side. He feels heavy and sated, languid and sweet. Garak dozes lightly, face pressed into the crook of Julian’s neck, warm breaths making the spot humid. It’s uncomfortable in that way that all closeness is uncomfortable, yet desired.

“Am I safe to assume this wasn’t some wild fumble after that ridiculous incident with the counselor?” Garak murmurs, lips grazing against Julian’s neck.

“Admittedly, that was pretty thrilling,” Julian concedes. “I think the counselors underestimated the sheer erotic potential of intrigue. And our instructor’s weirdly sensual voice. It’s kind of voyeuristic, when you think about it.”

Garak pinches his side— _ouch!_ “Answer.”

Julian presses his face to Garak’s hair and closes his eyes, inhales deeply and cards unhurried fingers through it. Cardamom and cloves, a hint of something pickled, that’s what Garak smells like. “No”—muffled—“I didn’t fall in love with you because of stupidly erotic yoga, or because of my concussion. I’ve been in love with you for a while. Obsessed with you for longer.”

Garak doesn’t answer immediately, lets them rest in comfortable silence for so long that Julian thinks he’s dozing again. “I think I might have been charmed by the yoga.”

“It was my backside, wasn’t it?” Julian wiggles down so that they’re face to face and Garak lets out a small disgusted but heatless _ugh_.

“Your neck, back, and legs actually. Though I can’t say that’s bad either.”

“Ah, _right_. Yoga came in handy. I never knew one could be pressed into such positions.” Enough bullshit. Julian rouses himself from the haze of complacency and rolls Garak over, straddles his waist. He laces his fingers with Garak’s and leans down to kiss him teasingly. “I’m going to swim.”

“ _Now_?” Garak’s voice goes high with incredulity, freeing his hands and holding Julian in place with a tight grip on his thighs. “You _showered._ You’re _concussed_.” 

“Mm, yeah,” Julian murmurs, gaze flickering from Garak’s lips up to meet his eyes. “Come with?”

“Too cold,” Garak whines. “And dark. I’ll wait up for you.”

“You do that anyway, silly.” Another kiss, break away, pulled back in by thumb on the jaw, laughing into each other’s mouths. “Won’t take long.”

“Be good,” Garak says, letting Julian go and watching him stand, petting his ankles as he stretches and towers over Garak below. It can’t possibly be a flattering angle, but Garak looks at him appreciatively just the same. With a grin, Julian trots off of the mattress and scoops items of clothing from the floor, pulls them on and rakes his fingers through his hair, pushing it from his face.

“Julian,” Garak says, and there’s something about the plaintive note in his voice that stops Julian, makes him turn and look at Garak, his body a fissure in the gnarl of love-rumpled sheets. _Oh_ , unfair. Julian feels his face crumple. “Come back soon.”

“I love you,” Julian says and it doesn’t feel enough. “I will.”

****

In truth, Garak does plan to stay in bed. It’s the logical thing to do, it’s what he’s been doing, but for some reason the room feels too alone and too small without Julian’s expansive presence there in it. Garak, not one to be accused lightly of sentimentality, finds himself staring down at the pile of shirts Julian has gradually allowed to amass in a corner of the room. He crouches down and sorts through it until he finds something with give, but hopefully warm too. What he finds is a sweater, horribly well-worn and fraying at the hems. It seems one bad tug away from unraveling. Garak slips into it carefully, the distinct scent of Julian unmistakable.

Outside, the wind tears and Garak walks over the sand dunes barefoot. The moon is high, everything lent an unworldly pale glow. Everything except Julian, whom Garak cannot spot. Somehow this prospect doesn’t make him feel any fear. That he doesn’t fear something out of his control is a first, he thinks, looking out at the inky sea. It looks more solid this way—an impenetrable barrier blocking him from the one he’s chasing, and blocking the one he’s chasing from him. He could, if he wanted to, blindly follow, but where he knows that Julian can come back, has come back, Garak also does not know that _he_ himself could come back. He sees it as an exercise of patience, then, hoping that Julian, somehow, senses that he is there and breaks down the barrier.

He’s sitting in the sand, arms folded over his pressed-together knees, when Julian walks out of the sea. He splits the panorama into that which is _Julian_ and that which is not. Dripping in moonlight, Julian, dark like a shadow, moves up the beach. Suddenly desperate to not be left behind, Garak gets to his feet and runs like he hasn’t run in years. Like he hadn’t even run for the changeling. His feet hit water, kicking up wet sand, and for some reason he can’t call out.

Julian turns around, surprise plain on the beautiful creases of his face, and Garak folds into him. Crashes into him, really, both of them stumbling for footing. Garak can feel the bottom hems of his pants soaked in the swell, can feel Julian both wet and warm against him. He wraps his arms around him and tucks his face in Julian’s chest, breaths shuddering out of him. There is no sound—nothing but for the delicate line of their breathing, Garak’s heart thudding against his breastbone, the sea crashing and curling. Trigger and spring.

“I thought you said you’d wait,” Julian murmurs against his forehead, hands slipping under the hem of Garak’s borrowed sweater. His grip on Garak’s waist is damp, makes Garak shiver.

“I thought I would wait, but suddenly I was outside instead.” Garak kisses Julian’s chest, hands dragging up the column of Julian’s shapely back. He counts each vertebra silently, feels the brush of Julian’s chest hair against his cheek. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to understand Julian’s body entirely. “The room became small without you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Julian says, not sounding very sorry at all. His hair, when Garak rakes his fingers through the curls at his nape, is tacky and dry with salt. If Julian has any opinions on Garak’s behavior, he keeps them to himself. “You’re wearing my sweater.”

“I am,” Garak agrees, feeling himself hot. The tips of his toes, sunken in the wet sand and surf, his fingers in Julian’s hair, his stomach pressed against Julian’s—it’s all scalding. Julian’s hands travel upwards, maintaining contact with Garak’s skin as long as possible, rucking up the hem of the sweater until he can’t anymore. He extracts his hands, leaving electric blue arousal in their wake, and gets a solid grip on Garak’s hair. His fingers slide through the strands, winding Garak’s head back until Garak lets out a small wounded sound. He kisses Garak’s throat, his jaw, takes his time and doesn’t tease.

Mortifyingly, Garak feels himself shake, eyes far too warm, eyes aching. He squeezes them shut, his hands slipping down again for the warm planes of Julian’s stomach. They jump under his touch, and Julian groans before he sweeps Garak into a long tender kiss.

“Sorry,” Garak says breathlessly when their mouths break away from one another. Julian shakes his head, hushes Garak, and Garak, mired in the blaze, stares with eyes that want to know everything. He wants everything Julian will offer. He’ll go as far as Julian lets him.

“Sorry,” he says again, for a different reason. Because Julian goes out and swims and it’s not like Garak is unaware. He knows that it is not mindless exercise. Julian does it every night, over and over, as if paying a penance.

Paying a penance is something Garak knows all too well. He lives on DS9 because it is the closest he can get to Cardassia, and yet it is a penance all the same. Every day he has to confront the population his people subjected to nameless abuses. Every day he opens his shop and knows that he is as guilty as any other Cardassian. He has to wonder what Julian is running from. Compared to Garak, Julian is someone so utterly blameless of anything, and yet he picks up the burden of guilt because it is what he perceives as the right thing to do.

Garak cannot absolve Julian of his burden and, though Julian said he forgives Garak, the inverse is true as well. Garak can’t save this man that lets out a shaky laugh and winds his fingers with Garak’s. But he can wait for him and let him know that whenever he leaves, he has someone waiting for him to come back. 

V.

_“But until I shiver from the touch / of your hand, since yesterday my initiation, / every sign of life that presses me / lies unshaped within your fixed measures.”_

The cobblestone steps leading up to the shrine are embedded into the side of the mountain. The further up they go, the more distant the sea crash sounds, melting into the noises of burbling birds and crickets. Frogs warble and on occasion small monitor lizards dart quickly around their feet. Fiddler crabs, one pincer larger than the other and waving with foolhardy bravado, climb the trunks of trees. The green thickens, heavy in the air, canopy throwing fragmented shadows that toss in the wind. Julian drags his hand over the trinkets tied to the woven fence. On occasion, when a finger bumps into a bell, the metal jingle becomes another ambient noise.

Julian’s palm is damp on the small of Garak’s back, or maybe it’s Garak’s back that is damp. It’s muggy and close as beach turns into forest. And then—a clearing. The shrine is little more than an alcove made of stones carefully slotted together. The packed earth floor is crowded with carved wooden figurines, tokens, jewelry, miscellany. Inside there are no idols, no images, no guidance as to what, exactly, one should do. Garak has never been a religious person. He doesn’t know the protocol.

He hangs in the periphery as Julian approaches, eyes bright with placid curiosity. He touches everything, as a child might, without abandon or shame or embarrassment. There’s respect, but also a distinct lack of care for whether or not he should touch the things left behind. In a way, Garak feels as if he is intruding on a space where others have come and for whatever reason felt the need to leave a part of themselves behind. Maybe even speak to something beyond themselves. Secretly, it’s a bit admirable that they put so much faith in it. He’s learned to respect things like these, see the beauty in them. When confronted with Bajoran revelry and piety, with its moments of calm and effusive joy, it’s hard to not look at it from the outside and somehow ache.

Julian doesn’t so much pray as sit, legs folded under him, at the threshold of the alcove. His shoulders slope in relaxation and his back is a controlled line. His stare, leveled, pierces ahead, lost in thought. Garak busies himself by taking a turn at the fence, turning over ribbons with words marked into them, blurring into oblivion already. There are such desperate wishes scrawled, mirrored there, that Garak flushes and abandons the effort quickly. When he turns, Julian is peering at him, wry smile on his face.

“What?” Garak asks, self-conscious.

“Nothing.” The teasing timbre of Julian’s voice makes Garak draw closer. Julian presses the side of his head against Garak’s leg and looks up at him, eyes too fervently dark, too impossibly boundless.

“What did you”—Garak begins, voice ragged and mouth dry—“What did you, um, pray or wish for?”

Even as he says it, he grimaces and Julian gives him a strange look, half-amused. “I didn’t pray. I just… gave thanks.”

“Gave thanks? To whom?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Garak,” Julian says testily. “The universe. The Prophets, maybe.”

“Why do you still call me Garak when we’re alone?” Garak doesn’t mean it to come out so fragile, but maybe the ambiance of the place is getting to him. He’ll blame it on the heartrending sentimentality he saw on the trinkets. Julian’s brows rise with surprise, stunned speechless before he seems to really _look_ at Garak, sober and alert.

“You prefer Elim?” he asks, fingers caressing up and down Garak’s ankles.

“When we’re alone, I don’t mind it.”

“We’ve gone about this ass-backward, you know.” Julian shakes his head slowly and laughs quietly. Garak can’t say he disagrees. Julian pushes himself up into a stand and dusts off his pants. “I gave thanks for life, this, us, everything.”

“Feeling generous, aren’t we?” Garak feels strangely like he’s underperforming, but he’s touched by light.

“Yes,” Julian muses. “Yes, I am.”

He turns and smiles toothily, boyish charm devastating. His arm outstretched, he waits until Garak takes his hand and then begins humming as they walk. In a book Julian lent him, early on in their tenuous friendship, a Betazoid author had written words that Garak found fanciful at the time: _The soul weighs a mere 15 grams. It would not be odd if it found itself astray now and then_. _A thing as light as that has no choice but to surrender to the weight placed on it, or the lack thereof._ This unnamable thing that fills him, the high end of the pendulum sweep—he can find no other words to describe it than a surrendering.

****

Tanar and T’prinventh are scheduled on the transport before them, so they’re in the same departure group. It hasn’t been easy to meet up during the last few days at the resort. The mysterious disappearance of Garak and Julian’s counselor made other counselors overcompensate with the couples therapy. It’s terrible that none of the sessions were even half as good as the changeling’s. What it meant was that their orderly schedule was totally upended on the whims of whatever counselor took up their session for the day. Bless T’prinventh for stoically weathering the erratic brunches Tanar and Julian scheduled for them all. The two of them together are a force to be reckoned with.

Tanar barks out a laugh, hand braced on Julian’s shoulder as she bends in half, shaking and looking like she’s almost in pain. Julian’s not much better and they both keep looking over at Garak and T’prinventh. Garak and T’prinventh look at each other with an equally unamused expression on their faces.

“It’s rude to speak of people as if they’re not there,” Garak says, glaring at them reproachfully.

“Sorry, Garak, it’s just—” Julian dissolves in a peal of laughter.

“You both look so incredibly annoyed with your necklaces of flowers!” Tanar says, voice going high with poorly concealed amusement.

Just at that moment T’prinventh sneezes and startles them all, including herself, with it.

“Ah,” she says, sniffling and wiping at her nose. “It seems I may be experiencing an allergic reaction.”

Instead of helping, like the doctor he should be, Julian covers his face with his hands and laughs into them. Julian has previously described T’prinventh as _terrifying_. Garak hadn’t perceived her that way at all, but he supposes now neither of them do.

“Useless,” Garak huffs, pulling the medkit from Julian’s hands. Julian snatches it back with an indignant look.

“You don’t even know how to use half of the things in here!” Julian exclaims as he rifles around and finally finds the right hypo. He waves T’prinventh over and administers it to the side of her neck. “There. You should be feeling relieved shortly.”

“I know what an anti-allergy hypo looks like,” Garak mutters and Julian rolls his eyes, slipping behind him and wrapping him in his arms. He rests his chin on Garak’s shoulder with a _mhmm_ that doesn’t sound at all convinced. Garak, in spite of himself, leans back into his comforting warmth. “I do!”

“Do you need a hypo, too?” Julian asks, voice lilting teasingly as his warm breath ghosts over Garak’s ear. The small, choked-off _no!_ Garak lets out only makes Julian chuckle.

T’prinventh, when Garak glances at her, is being manhandled out of her flower necklace and it’s swiftly replaced with a thick scarf that Tanar uses the tails of to pull T’prinventh closer and give her a sweet kiss. T’prinventh flushes and her eyes go to the ground when they break away, voicing a muffled _thank you_. Tanar swings their hands together happily, bouncing on her heels. Julian must be rubbing off on him, because all he can think while watching them is how _relieving_ it is that they’re not acting estranged from one another anymore. He’s disappointed, even, when their transport arrives and Tanar leans in to kiss his cheeks, kiss Julian’s. T’prinventh salutes them with the Ta’al and gives them both a small nod.

“Don’t keep quiet over subspace!” Tanar calls out with a grin as she enters their shuttle and tugs T’prinventh behind her.

“Let’s have _brunch_ again someday,” T’prinventh says, and Garak swears he sees the corner of her mouth twitch up into a smile.

Once the door closes behind them, Garak turns to Julian with brows raised. “I told you there was nothing terrifying about her.”

“No, Elim,” Julian says. “That smile was terrifying.”

“How fast you and Tanar _talk_ about things and _gossip_ is what’s terrifying.”

“You’re just jealous because I had the inside scoop on what was happening with everyone else before you did,” Julian says smugly, poking Garak’s side. _Whatever_.

In the distance, their own transport breaks atmosphere in its steady approach. Julian squeezes him tighter and buries his face at the nape of his neck, pulling away hair to lay a chaste kiss there.

“I’ll miss it here,” Julian murmurs. “I’ll miss us here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Garak says, laying his hands over Julian’s arms. “I’ll be right where I’ve always been: just down the way from the medbay in my shop.”

“You won’t pretend nothing’s changed?” Julian sounds so hesitant, his arms wrapped around Garak like he’s afraid Garak will vanish if he lets go.

“No, Julian,” Garak says. He turns in Julian’s embrace and sees his open face drawn in a self-embarrassed pained look. His cheeks burn and he can’t quite meet Julian’s eyes, gaze stuck around Julian’s chin, around the forgotten morning stubble. “I’m here, with you. Yours for the keeping, whenever you want it.”

“Okay, yeah.” Julian tilts his head up, chin wobbling and lets out a watery laugh. He wipes at his eyes and nods. “That’ll work.”

Garak breaks from the embrace to grab their luggage as the shuttle pulls up to the landing. Where normally he would feel apprehensive about the prospect of being in a small space for several hours, Julian is there, with his too-warm palms on Garak’s waist and the scent of ylang-ylang dabbed behind his ears. It’s settling in the way he’s come to specifically associate with Julian. With his ability to open a room.

“Do you suppose,” Julian says with that good-natured and mild voice that spells trouble, “Quark could get up a holosuite program of the planet?”

“If _Quark_ got us a holosuite program of the planet, my dear, we would never get a rest from _APHRODESIA_ , I’m sure.”

Julian’s knee knocks against his as they take their seats. He leans back, stretching out the long lines of his body and making himself at home before he turns to Garak and props his head up on a hand, grinning satedly. His eyes flick down to Garak’s feet and Garak feels the slow drag of them upwards like they’re Julian’s hands on him. “I don’t know. Could be… interesting.”

“Enough.” Garak folds his arms and closes his eyes, intending to get some rest before he scalds his own scales with the rate of how his face burns. 

“Boo,” Julian says, leaning over the armrest to cuddle close. “You’re _no_ fun.”

****

Debriefing at the station takes three whole days where, for most of them, Julian is in separate top-secret Starfleet meetings. They don’t see each other but for in passing. It’s odd for Garak to settle back into his mundane life. There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance, to realize that he still has _orders_ from _clients_ that he has to complete. Still, he spends a relatively small amount of time in Ops, a mere hour, and then he’s free to do what he’s always done. The schedule on Angama IV was so well-structured that Garak never felt stifled by either the amount of activities or the amount of leisure time. There was perfect balance. What’s more, there were few moments where he was without Julian.

It worries him that he misses him. Before their mission, sometimes they only had enough time to see each other once a week for lunch. After five hours Garak is already bored and, admittedly, feeling lonely. So, he makes himself busy. Even though he is technically able to do whatever he wants and he doesn’t have to open his shop on the day he’s only just arrived, there’s little of interest in his room.

For the three days it takes Julian to finish up with Starfleet Intelligence, Garak catches up with his orders, with the rising trends and fashions, and uses his charms to learn all the latest happenings around the Promenade (AKA, he asks Quark.) Finally, _finally_ , on the fourth day, Julian rushes into the shop, cheeks ruddy and eyes bright when he spots Garak. His face splits in a grin and, well, it’s been a while since Garak’s seen Julian in uniform. Though it’s not very _good_ shoulder-padding, there’s something to be said for how it emphasizes Julian’s trim waist.

“Garak!” Julian says, looks around to see if they’re alone in a very exaggerated way that is probably entirely unaware of itself and sincere. “ _Elim_ , gah!”

“Shouldn’t you be in the medbay right now?” Garak drawls, slipping another ball headed pin along the hem of the dress he’s working on. His feigned disinterest makes Julian put a hand on the fabric, leaning his body over the table.

“Yes, but I missed you,” he says and Garak hums, looking down at his hand disapprovingly, ignoring the way his stomach flutters. Julian’s frankness always leaves him disarmed.

“You’ll wrinkle the fabric, dear.”

“Didn’t you miss me at all? Not even a little bit?” Julian, obnoxious as ever, leans more of his body on the dress, propping his head up with both hands under his chin, fluttering his lashes at Garak. Infuriating, how it works.

“I missed you a _lot_.” Garak sighs, averting his gaze and staring at his hands in his lap. It’s only been three days and Garak feels, of all things, nervous. He feels nervous and sweaty-palmed. “Now, please?”

“Elim,” Julian says, elongating the vowels with his lovely tenor voice. “Look at me.”

Garak bites the inside of his cheek. It’s just—what is Julian’s obsession with _looking_ at him? When he does raise his eyes, Julian is smirking and blinking slowly up at him from under a fan of lashes, darkened eyes riveted on Garak. Even now, after so much time, those eyes still make him feel off balance. It’s always been that way, from the beginning, Julian so eager to know and always prodding. Always testing. He has a way about him—an undertow that is likely to sweep Garak off his feet and into the depths.

Garak swallows dryly, a peculiar frisson between them in the silence that follows—a discomfort that is not entirely unwelcome. Julian breaks the stilled shape of them when he reaches out to Garak and Garak goes willingly, his hands on either side of Julian’s face as they kiss. Julian’s thumbs rub circles behind Garak’s ears. Garak tangles his fingers in Julian’s curls and he feels Julian melt against him.

“That’s nice…” Julian murmurs against his lips. “I _really_ missed you.”

“Why don’t you go on ahead and take an early lunch,” Garak says, not knowing where the words are coming from because his head certainly isn’t clear enough to be coming up with them. “I’ll finish up here and join you.”

“Okay, yeah. I can—I can do that.” Julian leans back, raking his hands through his hair and looking completely rumpled, dazed and unfocused. He doesn’t even bother attempting to right himself before he leaves and Garak shakes his head, staring after him fondly.

The dress is wrinkled beyond compare. But the soul is an incredibly light thing, so he can’t even say he minds. 15 grams—reckless and easily swayed, easily led astray. _Impressionable_ , Tolan had said once, whittling away the daylight in his workshop. _Wood is impressionable. Children, like you, Elim, are impressionable. It’s not bad, sometimes, to allow someone to make a space in you. Whatever happens, Elim, whoever you grow up to be—don’t forget that._

The next time he sees Julian, already seated at the replimat reading from the datapad in his hand, and Julian raises his hand with a smile, Garak feels the ocean in his veins. Julian call out across the distance, “Garak!”

And Garak finds that he doesn’t have to choose between swimming across an ink-black sea or waiting at the shore to be let in. It’s as easy as eating lychee. Easy as anything.

All he has to do is smile, and call back.

**Author's Note:**

> Always happy to hear your thoughts <3 find me on twitter and Tumblr @skepticamoeba


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